


Love It If We Made It

by L_awlietxoxx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ...Or so she thinks, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, American Politics, Angry Sex, Banter, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Ben stands for everything Rey hates, Current Events, Department of State staff Ben, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, International Development worker Rey, Modern Politics AU, Political Drama, Switching back and forth between the two constantly, They're on opposite sides of the political spectrum and each convinced they're right, This might trigger political angst, Washington DC AU, Who's got his sights set higher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2020-06-30 00:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 67,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_awlietxoxx/pseuds/L_awlietxoxx
Summary: Sometimes he’ll text just a hotel name and room number. Sometimes they’ll catch each other’s eyes across a crowded room full of ambitious, superficial cutthroats. Now and then, she’ll text a bar name for drinks.Sometimes it scares them both, to think how they got here. Then they’ll think about morning, about the world outside the window, and just hold each other for one meager minute more.It doesn’t make sense, but then again, nothing does anymore. The only refuge to be found lies in the kind of loss of control that feels good; feels right. That doesn’t need ideology or investigation or twisted intelligence. It’s a simple sublime truth, and means everything.“Fuck, Rey,” he breathes into her mouth, sounding weaker than any man his size has ever been. “There are already too many walls in the world. Can’t we break this single one down?”





	1. An Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> This is hands down the most personal thing I've ever written. I made Rey's job very similar to my own, and writing through her frustration with political circumstances and her complicated feelings for a man tangled up in the middle of it all has been my personal outlet these past few weeks.
> 
> The title is from [The 1975's song of the same name](https://youtu.be/1Wl1B7DPegc), which put to sound and words the sentiments driving this story. This fic aside, I don't think there's anything that more accurately captures the frustration, disaffection, and incoherence of our modern political age.
> 
> Heaps of love and thank you's to [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/pseuds/KyloTrashForever) for making me gorgeous graphics and helping me with chapter breaks!

Rey is eighteen the first time she gets arrested. With most of her Peace Corps year already behind her and her flight home only weeks away, she throws her voice into escalating protests demanding Tibetan independence. When Chinese security forces start beating back the passionate crowds and arresting indiscriminately, Rey wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere but swept up in the middle. 

She and a handful of other Americans are sorted out, marched into another vehicle, and hours later dumped in a holding area in the American embassy. Feeling very much like co-conspirators, Rey and her five partners in crime converse in urgent whispers, determining their unified position before the first of them are taken for questioning. 

When Rey’s turn finally comes, she’s about ready to spit fire. 

The room she’s brought to isn’t exactly the austere interrogation room she’d been envisioning to fuel her righteous anger. Her hands are free and indulgent, wasteful plastic bottles of water with English labels awaiting her on the table. She scowls at them.

Then the door opens. A tall, bespectacled man enters. He draws a large hand through his dark, tumbling hair before he sits down across the table from Rey, a folder in one hand and a distinctly dispassionate frown on his lips. 

He flips the folder open. Clicks his pen. Doesn’t look at her. 

Rey glares openly, becoming more irritated by the second at this guy who’s too young and too quiet to measure up to her envisioned state of pique. 

“Rey Johnson. You’ve spent the last ten months in Tibet as a PeaceCorps volunteer.”

He still doesn’t look up at her – speaking with the toneless disinterest of one who neither expects nor cares to be contradicted.

He clicks his pen a few more times. Rey crosses her arms, remaining stubbornly silent until this soulless government cog acknowledges her as a person rather than text on a page. 

“Yes?” he finally asks with edge, gaze skipping up to Rey’s face. 

“Yes, what?”

“Is that correct?”

“I wouldn’t want to question your all-knowing documents. If you’ve got stalker info gathered about me, then you’ve certainly also got plenty of intel about all the human rights violations you’ve been conveniently ignoring, so long as your best friend China remains a lucrative trading partner.”

The guy stares for a long moment, expression immobile. Then, Rey watches his jaw tighten with no small surge of satisfaction. He drops his pen on the table, closes the folder, and sits back in his chair. Now, he levels Rey with proper, albeit begrudging, attention.

“Do you identify with Tibetan independence radicals, Miss Johnson?”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Don’t ignore me. I asked about just how much you and your bosses know.”

“I didn’t come in here to talk about me,” the guy responds, deadpan serious and long-suffering. “We’re here to discuss you and any potential links you may have to dangerous individuals within the Rangzen movement.”

“So now the US government puts more resources towards following Peace Corps volunteers around, than trying to alleviate the conditions driving those ‘dangerous individuals’ to desperate measures.”

“The Peace Corps program is funded by the US government, may I remind you, and you’re only here on its dime. Indeed, we expend more resources cleaning up the mess when a US citizen becomes embroiled in politically precarious civil unrest abroad.” His eyes flash as they narrow at her. “ _Especially_ when that US citizen is under agreement to comport herself as an ambassador of her country.”

Rey can’t help her smirk. She’d finally riled him. Not a soulless cog after all.

“Maybe I don’t want it to be my country anymore.”

“Unless you’ve processed documents for citizenship renunciation in the last hour out in the waiting room, that is irrelevant.”

“You’re irrelevant.”

His eyebrow rises while a corner of his mouth quirks.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You come in here like you’re some big shot, but the brass you work for don’t give a shit about you or me. They certainly don’t give a shit about Tibetans dying under repressive martial law.”

“No, they certainly don’t, nor is it their job to. And that is not our topic of conversation.”

“I feel sorry for your girlfriend if this is what you call conversation.”

“ _Miss Johnson_ ,” he says sharply, eyes narrowing at her from behind glasses and his mouth losing its soft edge. “I’m here to help you. Once we affirm you have no connections to leaders in the movement, the Chinese government will allow us to send you home without charges. You can be on a plane tomorrow, while every Tibetan protester arrested today likely faces years behind bars.”

Rey crosses her arms hard, burrowing back in her chair with a resolute scowl. 

“You say that like it’s supposed to make me grateful for my privilege.”

“In this situation, Miss Johnson, you’d be a fool not to be grateful. If you were in a Chinese interrogation room right now, you’d be having a much harder time. Trust me.”

His last two words lingering tangibly in the air between them, he adds before Rey could inject her snark, “Insufferable as you may find me and all I stand for, I give you my word to get you back home as soon as possible, once you’ve cooperated with my questions. Outside of this embassy, you’ll never find a promise like that.”

“How can you work with them?” Rey blurts, her tone suddenly blunt and personal, words no longer calculated.

Her questioner falls silent, watching her for a moment in a silence his whole body seems to sink into. 

Rey uncrosses her arms and clarifies, “With a foreign government that tramples on everything you profess to stand for – Human dignity, freedom, and rights.”

Slowly, he looks away. He sits back in his chair, his broad frame slumping at the shoulders. Rey finds her gaze sliding down his arms, to where his shirtsleeves are rolled at his elbows. 

For half a moment, Rey is sure she’s broken through his exterior to see something more beneath. She suddenly finds herself insensibly excited at the thought. 

She’d never even seen this man before ten minutes ago. She doesn’t know his name. But something about him captures her. Maybe it’s the flash of conflict she swears she sees in his eyes. Maybe it’s the unraveling of layers, since he walked into the room and at first wouldn’t look at her. 

Or maybe it’s her – Whatever it is inside Rey that makes her heart pound a strange, irritating way when he’s looking at her the way he is right now; Still chained and detached, but something cautious flickering in the depths.

With alarm, Rey suddenly becomes aware of her palms sweating, and the fact that her face is probably pink. 

In a rare occurrence, Rey has no words for what’s happening right now. 

Her questioner clears his throat as if to swipe away the pregnant moment. His expression shuttering closed again, he reopens the folder. 

“If you please, Miss Johnson.” 

* * *

Rey never thought she’d be the DC type. She’s still not convinced, but it turned out she could only spend so long as an Amnesty volunteer before she succumbed to the inevitable need for a real salary. 

“What stiff are you meeting with this time?”

Rey sighs as she checks her email for the name before answering her colleague.

“Whoever it is, they won’t give us a hard time, will they? It’s not exactly our fault that an Ebola outbreak delayed our program startup in the Congo.”

“Depends who you talk to. Some of those State Department people seem to think getting government grants suddenly makes us miracle workers.”

Rey gives a derisive laugh. “Tell that to all the anti-US protesters outside our field offices.”

She pauses scrolling through her email when she fishes out the meeting details.

“Looks like… Ben Solo?”

When she receives no immediate response, Rey looks up to find her colleague giving her a deeply sympathetic look. 

“Sorry to say: Total annoying hard-ass. Certain to give us a hard time about the delayed startup.”

Rey groans, slumping in her chair. 

“Fuckin’ great.”

Rey’s teammate gives her an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “But who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to figure out how to get the stick out of his ass.” 

Rey’s skin is already crawling as she passes through the massive doors of the Department of State with stars and eagle crests blazoned across. She huffs loudly at the security guard who makes her unpack every single item from her shoulder bag. By the time she reaches the correct meeting room, she already hates this day and this place; and even more so the fact that she has to be here pandering to these self-aggrandizing bureaucrats who stand for nothing but their own empty systems of control.

It approaches fifteen minutes before the door finally opens. A tall, dark-haired man steps through holding a folder, and Rey is physically frozen for a moment by the sight – So alarmingly, unexpectedly familiar that it strikes something nearly forgotten deep in her chest.

The man, for his part, keels back in a similar state of off-kilter surprise. 

“You…” he breathes, eyes wide and seeming to demand his entire attention to process the sight of her. “It is you.”

“Ben Solo?” Rey asks quietly, finding herself stranded in a rare speechless moment.

Ben straightens up, squaring his shoulders as he clears his throat. 

“Yes. I didn’t get a chance to check the briefing notes before our meeting but… I’d recognize you anywhere. Rey.”

His eyes – no longer obstructed behind a pair of glasses – dart up to look at her. Rey remembers years ago, trying so hard to get him to look at her. Now, Rey swallows and finds herself inexplicably wishing he would look away.

“Excuse me,” he says, clearing his throat as his gaze drops towards the floor and he seems to remember himself. “Miss Johnson.”

He comes to sit on the opposite side of the table from her.

He opens the folder as a charged moment of silence stretches between them. Rey’s mind is reeling in all directions. The reminders of their first encounter are dizzying, and yet Rey feels none of the anxiety that sometimes creeps over her when she remembers her arrest. Instead, she finds herself watching him with intrigue and perhaps some strange measure of hunger. Staring at him is like slipping into a disorienting time jump; even while she finds herself recognizing all the ways his appearance has changed. 

His glasses are gone and his hair grown out longer, accentuating the few years that have passed. Rey notices his weird ears are no longer visible and she slightly mourns the fact. In the questioning room ages ago, he’d worn only a button-up shirt with no jacket or tie. Now, he wears both. He looks polished and, to Rey’s disappointment, thoroughly square. He’d clearly worked his way up the mercenary chain.

In her head, she’s still trying to reconcile a determinate, one-syllable name with the expanse of this man in her head. 

“Ben…” she draws out the name on her tongue, testing it – seeing how it matches the face that had lodged itself without notice deep within her memory. Its resurfacing feels like breaking water and breathing that first sweet lungful of air.

Across from her, Ben shifts in his chair rather than look up at her and respond. He withdraws a pen from an inner pocket of his suit jacket which he twirls between his fingers, still looking down at the open folder rather than at Rey. She could see the tension in his jaw, and rather than the indignant irritation that had filled her the first time, now Rey finds herself only entertained by his apparent discomfort. A crack in his aloof façade Rey couldn’t keep away from. 

She crosses her legs and rests an arm on the table.

“Isn’t it a bit unfair that I didn’t know your name until now?”

Ben looks up, taking her in with a spark in his eyes. He lifts his shoulders and sits back on his own side of the table, matching her challenge.

“Considering you were being questioned for potential ties to foreign dissidents, perfectly fair I would say. Besides…” he rolls his shoulders slightly, momentarily distracting Rey with just how broad they are in that crisp jacket. “…why should you have any interest in my name? After you spent those entire two hours being infuriating and insulting.”

“Two hours?” Rey raises her eyebrows in mock surprise, though she remembers perfectly well how long their standoff had lasted. “We were at it for quite a while.”

Ben blanches slightly, and Rey smirks unabashedly. 

“If you please,” he huffs, leaning forward to aggressively flip over a paper in the file, his eyes scanning too quickly to truly register anything. 

Rey rests her chin on her hand, smirking at him and having a _ball._ “I remember that phrase. When you got _real_ flustered.”

Ben’s gaze cuts up to her. He shifts forward in his seat, laying both hands on the table as if determined to wrest back his dignity.

“If you want to talk about getting flustered – Do you care to explain why your organization has been incapable of simple start up on a multi-million dollar grant you received over six months ago?”

Rey’s eyes narrow. She’d been ready to talk shop, and didn’t plan on giving up an inch of ground. All the better that that insufferable, superior tone he takes bristles at a more personal part of her.

“I bet you flunkies here at State think it’s simple, don’t you? Get the money, hire the staff, open the office, deliver the programs. But you only ever see these things through the lens that’s politically expedient for you on that particular day. How will the US government advance its bottom line?”

“There’s no profit involved when it comes to grants doing dubitable ‘rights advocacy’,” he air quotes the words, “-like yours. At best it’s good press, at worst an outright bleed of capital. Any funds the US government contributes to the development of the Democratic Republic of Congo are sacrificed with no expectation of hard or soft power gains.”

“Please, you really believe that? If every single grant you give is motivated by anything other than political self-interest, then tell me why there’s never been a grant for Somaliland – or even recognition of its sovereignty, for that matter. Tell me why every grant since the Helms Amendment comes with the ban on providing abortion services and maternal healthcare. Or why -”

Ben smoothly cuts in, “It is not the place of NGOs to craft US foreign policy or divert from our current interests. You forget yourself if you think it lies anywhere within your scope of work to advance an uninformed, illegitimate perspective on complex global challenges…”

“What exactly is _complex_ about the fact that unsafe abortions and a dearth of maternal healthcare services is one of the leading causes of death among women in developing populations? And you’re going to claim it’s any more legitimate for your government to sit back and take no action?”

“The age of self-interested imperialism is over. The US is looked to as a leader of globalization and humanitarianism, hence why billions of dollars are budgeted for programs such as these with no measurable return…”

“With conditions, earmarks, and restrictions. Awarded only to those organizations who agree to work from the palm of your hand, on the terms you determine.”

Ben looks at her for a long time, his wide form half leaning over the table now.

“…I hardly think you would ever describe yourself as doing anything from the palm of my hand.”

The deep timbre of his voice sends a shiver through Rey. It takes her an extra moment to swallow and breathe in. 

“Then we understand each other.”

“Do we?”

“We are not in a position to implement the DRC grant according to the original timetable due to complexities unforeseen at the application stage, and which lie far beyond the immediate sight of US political interest.”

“Such as?”

“Ebola. Civil society protests that shut down banks and close the streets. I’d like to see you open a functioning office in those conditions, even with all the money in the world at your disposal.”

“Then tell me why we have three grantees fully operational in the country already.”

“They’re all based in Kinshasa. Our alternate dispute resolution programs require that we operate in more rural areas – towns that aren’t even on the map. We had a number of established relationships with local partners, but the recent Ebola outbreak and last month’s attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces scrambled all our networks.”

Ben sighs and leans back, his fingers still steepled on the table on either side of the open folder. He considers for a long moment, dark eyes flickering between the folder open before him and Rey’s face – which she takes care to keep much more difficult to read. 

“I can give you a provisional six month no-cost extension. You’ll have to submit a formal request, of course, including a realigned budget and revised timeline.”

Rey nods, too relieved to say something clever. “Of course.”

“And your next quarterly report needs to show a running start. The grant life is only two years, you realize, and a quarter of the time has already passed.”

“I do know how to count and read a calendar, yes.”

So much for sheathing her snark. But when Rey meets Ben’s eyes – fully expecting to confront a hot flash of indignation – she finds his face calm and the corner of his mouth quirking slightly. 

He closes the folder.

“Yes, I imagine so.”

He stands up, and Rey automatically rises to mirror him. 

Her mouth is half open, needing to produce some sort of bookend to make sense of this – the second of their thoroughly disorienting confrontations. Confrontations that, inexplicably, Rey finds herself wishing wouldn’t end quite so soon. 

Ben beats her to it.

“This was actually not the worst surprise today.”

Rey quirks an eyebrow. “Wow, not the worst? You bureaucrats do know how to flatter.”

Again, that tiny flash of a smile that spasms across his face like he’s not used to it. Only a moment later his countenance falls serious again, but Rey finds herself noticing the gentleness lingering at the corners.

“It’s good to see you”

He speaks the words like a soft secret. Rey has to lean in just a little. She swears she caught a bit of color flash across his face after his own words registered. He makes a meager attempt to clarify and alleviate.

“Here. Thriving.”

Rey looks away, thinking furiously how to respond. Hostility seems to be her instinct when it comes to this man, but now she has to ask herself why. He hasn’t exactly given her reason for it – Both times, she’s been the one to come out swinging. 

She’s struck by the uncomfortable thought that perhaps the hostility is a mere cover for a more deep-rooted, bewildering reaction from somewhere in her subconscious. A reaction much more messy and debilitating than annoyance – One she finds herself shying away from even now. From even the thought. 

Yet even with his awkward, stilted words, she knows what he meant. She finds she understands him.

She makes herself lower her guards.

“I suppose I do have you to thank for it all, huh? That I’m not rotting in some Chinese prison cell.”

Ben gives just the slightest lift of one corner of his lips. He shifts his folder back and forth between his hands.

“Who knows? The next time you go off at the mouth I might send you back.”

Rey scoffs. “As if. Ben Solo, you’re a lot smaller than you know.”

He only blinks at that, expression still and unmoving. Here Rey had meant to stop being so combative, but instead she finds herself gnawing her lip after accidentally insulting him _again._ Something about him just burrows right under her exterior, pricking where she’s uncomfortably vulnerable. 

But Rey knows the other reason she does it – Always prodding and cutting at him. He seems to exist in some removed bubble, far beyond and above Rey’s plane of being. He’s far from the most condescending government staffer she’d ever met, but he’s the only one who makes Rey think, for a split second, that she might want to reach upwards.

“Perhaps… Perhaps,” is all Ben says, tone strange and receding. 

Then he ducks his gaze and leaves the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got the majority of this story already written, so updates will come frequently. I've got lots of nerves about this one so I would appreciate people's thoughts very much indeed. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Find me [over here](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


	2. Heart Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been smiling to myself for two days straight at the response to this fic so far! Every single one of you are lovely beyond belief and I hope you all stick around!
> 
> Again, here's credit and a million recommendations to [the song of this fic's title.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

Everything changes in Addis. 

After a year of delayed field operations, Rey flies to Addis Ababa herself to meet with key stakeholders in the African Union offices. With the upcoming Extraordinary Annual Summit, everyone she needs to talk to will be in town.

Standing out on her room’s balcony on the first night, Rey closes her eyes and feels at peace for the first time in too long. There’s still the din of traffic, still light pollution seeping into the night, but she swears something about the air seems _freer_ here. 

Every corner of DC is so stifling – Everything has been thought before, said before, attempted before; Always by someone who claims to know more, to understand the world more clearly. The race to the top is both endless and tireless, and Rey wishes she didn’t have to be forced to compete, if she wants to have any impact at all.

“Rey?”

Pulled abruptly from her thoughts, Rey dazedly looks around. She realizes someone has come out on the balcony from the room just beside hers. A man without a suit jacket, his pressed sleeves rolled up to the elbows and top button open, tie hanging undone from his neck. A lit cigarette between his fingers, arrested in mid-lift to his lips.

Rey’s stunned heart pounds in double time. 

“Ben? What are you doing here?”

Ben takes a moment just staring at her, seeming equally stunned in place. 

“I’m Secretary for International Organizations. Of course I have to be here for the Summit.”

“To lobby US interests?”

“Something like that,” he replies noncommittally, deftly avoiding her barb by finally reaching his cigarette to his mouth. 

Rey makes a face. 

“What kind of reckless people still smoke in this day and age?”

Ben gives her a wry smile as he breathes out smoke. “Doubtless the same kind who recklessly throw the world into political instability by advocating for nationalistic gain.”

His eyes sparkle at her as he takes a second drag. Rey glowers, but admittedly couldn’t have really put it any better herself.

“Did I get that right?” Ben asks, voice gently goading. 

Rey just crosses her arms. “So do you reject all scientific findings, or just ones hazardous to your health? I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re a climate change denier, at this point.”

Ben gives a shallow laugh. “Now you’re really being offensive.”

His eyes find hers steadily and hold as he raises his cigarette to his lips again. “Why are you here?”

“We’re running a program here in country. We need to maintain favorable AU ties to make it effective.”

“Effective how? Teaching a few townspeople about their recourse to human rights – A body of law with no functioning legal mechanisms for enforcement?”

Rey grits her teeth, even as she knows she deserves his retaliation. 

“Raising awareness of a treaty document passed right here, in their own country. Encouraging continent-wide ratification of the African Charter for Human and People’s Rights.”

Ben’s shoulders move in a way that might be silent, if partially repressed, laughter. 

“Yeah?” Rey states, lifting her chin. “Please, tell me all about what noble cause you’re here to promote.”

Ben looks away for a long moment, taking a slow breath with the cigarette between his lips as he looks over the skyline. 

He’s silent for a long time. When he finally speaks, his voice is entirely changed. 

“You really want to know?” he asks, so quiet his words are almost lost to the wind. “Or do you just want to spite me with it?”

Rey crosses her arms again, considering. Just when she loses her temper with his one-dimensional mode of thinking, he turns and shifts her perspective. Like some trick with those red-and-blue 3-D glasses from her childhood.

“You couldn’t tell me even if you wanted to.”

Leaning forward against the balcony railing, Ben turns to look at her steadily. Something about his heavy gaze makes Rey want to squirm where she stands. 

“We have quite a history by now. Maybe we could trust each other.”

Rey stills at that. He stares at her for a long moment without moving from place, his cigarette completing its disintegration into dust between his fingers. His eyes look so earnest. Something else in his face looks so alone. 

Cowed by the momentary flare of intensity, Rey curls inward and looks away. Her eyes land on the balcony railings – separating the two of them with iron bars. 

She recedes behind the drawbridge. 

“I don’t know if we ever could.”

Rey can’t immediately look up at him again, but she hears him rubbing out the cigarette under a foot. From the edge of her vision, she sees his wide hand brush across the railing between them.

“Good night, Rey.”

He turns, and is gone with the sealing of a glass door.

Rey remains on her own balcony, until the cool night air soothes her flushed face. 

* * *

Rey hates Ben Solo. She hates him more than she has ever hated anyone or anything in her entire life. 

She was halfway through what was probably the most important meeting of the trip – Finally, a face-to-face with the AU’s General Counsel – when Ben Solo waltzed into the same restaurant with half a dozen other men in suits. He took a seat directly behind her and promptly began holding court. 

She can’t see him, but she’s far too aware of how he’d seated himself sideways in the chair – ostensibly to better converse with the group seated mostly to his left. He laughs occasionally, and she sees him tilt his head back from the corner of her eye. She can see the way he gestures with his hands when he speaks. She’s resolutely trying to focus on the Counsel’s words, rather than Ben’s, but his deep voice keeps infuriatingly cutting through everything. 

Cutting straight through her chest and shearing away everything else. 

Ten minutes since Ben arrived, Rey can already barely keep up the thread of her conversation. Then, just when she’s moving towards the final discussion point she needs to resolve, she feels a nudge against her foot that makes her stutter mid-sentence. 

She gets out the rest of her sentence in a rush, before lapsing into such a silent fit of pique she can’t even process the Counsel’s reply. Rey has to clench her fists beneath the table and bite her lip to keep her professional smile in place, when she feels another leisurely push against her foot. 

Clearing her throat, she rearranges herself with her legs crossed – what she calculates to be a safe distance. But less than a minute later, she senses Ben shifting in his seat behind her. Then the touch resumes to her ankle. 

She might kill him. Her conversation might come to an abrupt end when she whirls around in her seat to throttle him. 

Finally, Rey manages to wrestle her feet away from all assailants. She brings her meeting to a quick end – salvaging the conversation before it all unravels completely and the entire partnership is shot. 

After shaking hands with the Counsel, Rey turns and beats it to the door. She doesn’t look back. She’s afraid to.

* * *

That night, Rey’s still fuming when the knock comes on her door. 

She stalks to the door, stomping the whole way. When she sees his infuriating face through the peephole, the surge of aggression that flares through her takes her breath away.

When she flings the door open, her rage spikes when he immediately pushes past her and into the room. 

“Just what were you trying to pull today? What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?!” Rey demands, slamming the door with an excess of force that makes the doorframe rattle. “The partnership almost got fucked today because of you-”

“What’s wrong with _me_?” Ben repeats, and Rey is taken aback to hear his words _seething._

Crashing down his personal route of destruction, he savagely tugs his tie loose as he rails, “I didn’t sleep a goddamn wink last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about you in the next room over. Every fucking _minute_ of today, I couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think about anything but the fact that you’d be here again tonight. And I’d be right there – one wall away.”

He makes an abrupt, almost violent gesture with his arm towards the direction of his own room. Rey isn’t sure if she wishes he were on the other side of that wall right now. There’s a ferocity pouring from him that frightens some part of her; but the rest of her can’t soak it in fast enough. Luxuriating in it, even. It only feeds her own fury.

Rey glares flaming daggers, fighting a childish urge to stamp her foot.

“Yeah? Well that’s real funny, because I spent the night wishing you weren’t anywhere near me or this damn hotel. Wishing you were as far away as you could possibly be.”

It doesn’t stun or defuse him. It does nothing to dampen the fire clearly burning him from the inside out. He only goes still while a knowing, infuriating smirk grows on his face. 

“Is that what you tell yourself, Rey?” he asks, voice softer but tone edged and biting.

“Yes. And it’s how I feel. The truth.”

“Really.”

“Didn’t I just say?!”

“Well that’s some real hypocrisy – If you’ll get off your high horse for a fucking minute and don’t mind me calling it what it is. Because you were the one talking about scientific facts. Just like it’s a fact that your eyes get bigger and darker when you’re looking at me. Just like it’s a fact that your breathing’s elevated right now–”

“Because you _piss me off-_ ”

“–like it is every time we talk. Every time you see me.”

Rey’s chest is heaving now, and she’s starting to see red. Beyond the red – only him. 

“You can call me selfish, arrogant. You can say I stand for nothing; that I have no principles,” Ben grinds out, the scorching heat of his gaze threatening to set Rey aflame where she stands. “You can call me whatever you want. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re attracted to me.”

Rey gasps for breath as the room spins. 

“You pompous–”

Ben barks a laugh over her words. “That the best you can do?”

“–ignorant _joke._ An entitled white man who gets dressed in a fool’s costume every day and doesn’t know the difference. How typically conceited to think the entire world’s on their knees panting after you.” 

“I don’t give a fuck about the rest of the world. I’ll have you panting for me before the night’s over.”

“ _Fuck you–_ ”

“And maybe on your knees too.”

That’s it – the flash point when Rey’s reason blinks out and she rushes him. A mess of fury and hate and conflagration. She thinks, for half the blink of an eye, her arm is winding back to punch him.

But then she’s in his arms, his grip rough and greedy, and she’s kissing him like his mouth is the last sustenance on earth. 

She couldn’t say who’s the one moaning or who the loud whimpers are coming from, but what she _does_ know is that shoving her hands into his hair and gripping handfuls is one of the most satisfying things her hands have ever done. She knows his hands have already pushed their way up and under her shirt, leaving scorching heat across her back in their wake. 

She registers, finally, that his mouth has slowed its onslaught; that his lips have gone softer in the way they move across hers, and his arms have begun to cradle her against him. 

Suddenly, she’s transformed into a mess of passion and fixation and exquisitely intimate need.

“Fuck, Rey,” he breathes into her mouth, sounding weaker than any man his size has ever been. “There are already too many walls in the world. Can’t we break this single one down?”

Rey chases the words from their source, closing his bottom lip between hers again and again. It fuels her anger, really, that his lips are so stupidly sweet. It doesn’t make sense how soft they are – not with these raging, stabbing bursts that keep erupting in Rey’s chest because of them. Not when the rest of him is so _hard_ and aggravating. 

His wide hands span almost her entire waist. He squeezes a little, and Rey feels dizzy. 

“It’s already tumbling, Ben,” Rey breathes with difficulty. Her hands slide from his hair to fist in the shoulders of his suit jacket – overeager to rid him of the confines of her preconceived notions. 

Rey pulls back from his lips only enough to meet his wild gaze. “Let’s leave nothing left of it.”

“ _Rey_ ,” he breathes through his teeth. Then his hands cut loose, shedding all control. Rey has never been stripped more quickly in her life. Ben would probably be naked already too, but for the fact that Rey’s body is plastered to him and keeping her mouth away from his is suddenly _impossible._

Ben’s backing her towards the bed, his jacket chucked away by Rey, shirt falling behind him, and he seemingly has the same problem. He cups her face in both hands, fingers tight in her hair. “ _So this is how I shut you up_ ,” he breathes between her lips. 

She sneaks “ _Bastard_ ” into the next biting kiss, her fingers scrabbling at his belt, then the waistband of his briefs. 

The second his cock is free, he hauls Rey desperately up against it, sweeping her clear from the floor. Rey’s mind pulls apart when her thighs open around Ben’s waist; when she feels all of him pressed against her and sliding hungrily against where she’s already dripping. 

“Didn’t bring–” Ben chokes out, face buried against Rey’s neck where he seems on a mission to leave as many marks as he can.

“IUD,” Rey grunts out while her hips already start moving with a mind of their own, chasing friction and coating him more and more in her slick.

“Thank fuck,” Ben breathes. 

He steps forward to drop Rey to the bed on her back. She has only a moment to take him in from this angle – Impossibly tall and broad from where he stands over her, his wide chest heaving and his erection looking more imposing by the second.

Rey wants it everywhere, and _shit_ , why didn’t she realize sooner that she’d been confusing some of her blazing anger towards him with this throbbing, demanding _emptiness_ that’s so consuming, it must have existed before tonight…

He’s above her a mere moment later, strong, intent hands gripping her at the waist to pull her down the bed to him. His mouth is right there against her neck again, and Rey gasps, legs automatically falling open and her fingers scrabbling at his biceps when she feels the head of him already pushing against her. 

His labored breathing brushes across her skin, then up against her ear. He makes a noise near anguished as he rocks messily against her, his cock sliding against her folds. He makes the shattered noise again, and Rey realizes it’s the closest thing to permission she’ll ever hear him ask. Rey’s trembling beneath him, desperate for that pulsing heat between her legs to start fucking her already, but even near out of her mind with lust she still won’t beg. 

Instead, she makes an answering sound near a whine with his name wrapped up sweetly in the middle. She turns her head to kiss him sloppily, rocking herself down against him until he has no choice really. Ben groans into her mouth when Rey’s legs cage him in and draw him right in line. 

Then he pushes in and up, his back arched and hips tilted so he slides into her in one go. With all of him suddenly inside her, Rey’s mouth falls open in a wordless cry as her body shakes to accommodate him. She’s panting, expression screwed shut, and she releases a tiny whimper when he slides halfway out and pushes in again. 

But her legs don’t loosen around him or let him go. The noise she makes sounds less broken when he eases out, then fills her a second time. And she is _so_ full… Rey didn’t know it was possible to feel sparks in places like this – she swears almost up in her throat. He slides nearly all the way out, before pushing hard all the way into her core and this time Rey makes a noise utterly helpless as the pleasure overwhelms the pain. He’s so solid, reaching virgin places within her and making her stretch to breaking point around him. Rey wants to hold together, and at the same time to fall utterly apart. 

Then Ben props himself on his arms. Rey catches his gaze, then can’t escape from the blazing heat and hungry, starving fixation in his eyes. She wets her lips. Ben watches her tongue, sounds his own breaking point, and then he starts fucking her for real. 

Without restraint or even civility. Rey falls apart utterly, and Ben fucks every last piece.

* * *

Rey knows when she comes – She knows nothing _but_ that for a dizzying, worrying length of time. It feels like ages later when she comes back to herself enough to realize she’s on her side with Ben slotted up behind her. His arm heavy over her, his breathing slowly lowering against her neck, and his come spattered all over her thighs. She’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed he pulled out.

Rey blindly extends a hand back to find some part of him. Her hand lands somewhere near his hip, and he makes a rumbling sound of pleasant approval deep in his chest. The sound rolls through Rey in a warm shudder. 

He is so, so much bigger than her. Rey feels as if she might be at risk of vanishing, with all of him curled around her like this. She turns towards him just enough so her hand can wander a bit further. It traces across smooth planes of abdominal muscles, flat but unmistakable. 

Figures. He probably runs laps around the Mall every morning like a weirdo, up and down the Lincoln Memorial steps twenty times, then bench presses at lunch with all the other State Department bros…

There’s a snort against her ear, then, “Rey, you know you’re talking out loud.”

Rey scowls. “Of course I am. And making fun of you.”

She can’t see it, but somehow she feels the smirk against her ear. “I only run the Mall twice a week. Weights just once.”

His hand starts moving down her side then across her hip, exploring. 

“You’re so small,” he muses gently, his tone neither approving nor disapproving, just fascinated. His fingers trace up her stomach, then curl around one of her breasts. Rey’s fingers tighten against his hip when a thumb flicks her nipple. He whispers against her ear, all breath, “All of you could fit in my palm.”

Rey’s head is tilted back towards him, her lips open, and with his hand right over her heart he can feel its pace quickening. With his face so near hers, he can see her bite her lip as his hand slips down her body. He kisses the edge of her gasp when he sinks two fingers deep inside her. He stirs them lazily, savoring how she twitches in his arms. 

Nipping her throat between words, “Can’t believe you fit all of me inside there. For a second, I was afraid I might break you.”

Rey makes a distracted but unmistakable huffing sound. Her cunt clenches around his fingers in indignation. 

“You’ll never break me, Ben Solo.”

He sucks a bright signature into her neck. 

“That a challenge?”

“Only if you’re up for the task a second time.”

Ben shifts so his returning erection brushes where she’s flushed and wet all over again. A moan escapes Rey before she can stifle it. Ben smirks as he takes his time sucking another mark along her shoulder. He listens to her breathing rising higher and higher, feels how she grows more and more tense in his arms until she’s shaking; until she’s soaked and dripping all down his fingers. 

He withdraws them, and it doesn’t even matter that his cum is still coating her skin from round one. He pulls her hips back tight against him, raises one of her thighs up and back, and thrusts forward into her all at once. He hears her stutter out her pleasure, head tipping back and her mouth open wide, and there’s not a breath of air this time. Holding her open, he pumps into her with all the hunger and urgency and force of calamity. 

“ _Fuck_ , Rey – How are you _tighter_ the second time?”

Approaching the edge without brakes, Ben slides a hand around to press his fingers against her clit. Rey makes a sound like wreckage, and now Ben’s only that much closer as he feels how hot she is – how swollen as his fingertips work her. When Rey comes, she clamps down and tightens so much around him, he can barely pull out. The searing pleasure addling his brain almost freezes him, but he pulls out only just in time. His release coats her cunt.

They don’t curl together this time. The silence stretches long enough that normal breathing and a semblance of rational thought trickle back in. With the edge worked down, Rey feels a moment of self-preservation. 

“It’s after 1 AM. You should probably go.”

Ben doesn’t stiffen or frown beside her. He just lays there motionless for one more silent minute, before releasing a soft, “Mmhm.”

Rey tries not to watch as he collects his clothes and dresses. With his shirt only half-buttoned, he drapes his coat and tie over one arm. 

He briefly pauses once as if pondering speech, but then simply heads for the door. A quick “Good night,” is all that’s murmured over his shoulder.

* * *

The entire next day, Rey tries not to think about it. She tells herself no, without question, she is _not_ going to give into the temptation that’s been hovering at the edge of her mind all day. She hasn’t seen Ben once today, but she still _feels_ him there inside. She hasn’t heard his smug voice all day, but his soft moans and the way her name sounded broken across his tongue still rings in her ears.

Just out of the shower that night and wrapped in only a robe, Rey slowly freezes as she emerges from her bathroom. She’s only steps away from the door of her hotel room – Only steps away from… 

She gnaws her lip for a long moment. Before common sense has a chance to win out, she slides a room key into her pocket and slips out into the hall. 

When she knocks, Ben answers quickly. Like he was only steps away from the door himself. He freezes in the doorway when he sees her robe and her bare feet. 

His mouth more shapes her name than speaks it, before he steps aside to let her in. His room is bigger than hers – a suite, of course – but Rey barely notices. Her hands are immediately on his chest, pushing him back towards the bed. 

He goes easily, sitting back hard when the backs of his knees hit the bed. Without a word of preamble, Rey unties her robe. She watches his face, drinking in the sight of him drinking in her. His eyes are wide and barely blinking, lips parted slightly as he breathes slow and shallow. She watches his eyes linger on her nipples, hardening under his gaze, then travel further down. There’s no missing his inimitable appetite. 

Rey steps forward to straddle his lap, her knees on either side of him and the robe still framing her body. Inside the robe, his hands slide slowly up her thighs, gathering the heat of her skin. She leans her head down to brush her lips against his, as her fingers open his pants to free his already straining cock. He’s still dressed – still in his suit shirt and pants, tie still hanging around his neck – but it hardly matters. Rey sinks down onto his cock the second it’s exposed. 

She grits out a swear, gripping his shoulders hard enough to bruise as she forces herself down. He feels even _bigger_ this way, and Rey didn’t know it was possible for her to stretch this far. 

Ben is murmuring her name in desperate undertones, his hands running all over her, and then she’s seated fully in his lap and every inch of her is throbbing and screaming and rejoicing all at once. She’s shaking slightly, making a shuddering sound, as it feels like all of her insides – like _all of her_ – has been eviscerated to make room for Ben.

And like an addict, she wants _more._ Even though there’s no room for it, even though her mind is already tearing itself into ribbons to make sense of the stimulation. She lifts up slowly, only making it halfway. She whines, shaking as she sinks down again, and Ben’s hands run up and down her sides as his voice hushes and soothes her. 

“Can’t believe you’re doing this… Can’t believe you’re here. God, _look at you._ ”

Rey’s not sure what he means exactly, but that deep, husky tone in his voice makes her eyes roll upwards as she sinks down on him again. 

Rey can’t help the noises she makes, when she finally works into a rhythm. It hurts, but with the most blazing, tingling, _sensational_ pain she’s ever felt. And when she drops down all the way, each time she feels the wide head of him push into some deep, deep secret, buried so far inside her it doesn’t even seem to belong in this reality. It sets Rey alight with something otherworldly. 

For his part, Ben makes outright mindless sounds as he watches Rey ride him, as her body swallows him whole again and again – dauntless in her typical fashion. 

“Fuck. _Fuck_ , Rey. You _get to me._ Piss me off like no one else, every damn time you open your mouth. Why do you have to feel so fucking good inside?”

He feels her whole body trembling around him as she nears the end, and he can barely breathe as she somehow becomes still tighter around him, all of her inner muscles threatening to strangle him. 

“ _Ben_ – god, I feel you _everywhere…_ ” 

And then she cries out, a bright red flush spreading across her chest and her face as she comes hard, her core convulsing where he’s still embedded inside it. 

“Rey, I’m still…” Ben tries to protest, choking, but Rey keeps him locked inside her and he’s so, so deep that pulling out would take too long. He groans as he comes deep inside her, and Rey just hums in blissed, mindless satisfaction when she feels the blooming heat of it emanate through her. 

Even as he starts going soft, he’s still inside. Rey finds she can’t really move to do anything about it.

His hands shaking slightly, Ben takes hold of her waist and slowly lifts her off him. She whines in protest at being suddenly so empty, but the noise quickly turns to a broken moan when she feels the hot rush of his seed trickling out of her. 

Ben curses low when he sees it dripping down her thighs. 

His chest moves in belabored motions, unable to tear his eyes away from where he’s leaking out of her. 

“Ben,” she whispers. Her waist is still between his hands. Her eyes are trembling, fixed only on him. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, recognizing she feels just as cracked open and hallowed out as he does. Inside out. 

He lifts his head to kiss her slowly. Once he feels a bit of her agitation recede, he hooks his arms around her and stands up from the bed with her locked against him. He leaves tiny, sparing kisses across her forehead as he carries her to the bathroom. 

His suite is outfitted with a jacuzzi tub he never planned to use, but he feels something warm and strange in his chest when he gently sets her in it; When he carefully slides her arms from the sleeves of the robe to take it off her and set it aside. When he notices (again) how small she is, taking up only one corner of the massive tub as he turns the water and the jets on. 

He undresses, not caring where his clothes fall. By the time the tub is filled, he’s stretched out in it with her and has her bundled close against his chest. 

“That’s nice,” Rey sighs when Ben takes a soft washcloth to her inner thighs, her head tipping back easily as he kisses and suckles along her neck. 

The water never cools and the jets don’t stop, so they stay there until Ben notices Rey’s eyes beginning to slip closed, where her head’s pillowed against his chest. 

No, that won’t do just yet. 

He opens the drain and gently nudges her to sit up. He steps out of the tub first. He dries himself only cursorily before helping Rey out – holding her hand the whole time to make sure she won’t slip. Then he takes a fresh towel and takes his time drying every part of her. 

He picks her up again when she’s mostly dry – wrapped in a towel and all of her flushed a delicious pink from the hot water. He’s surprised she doesn’t protest to being carried so much, but he’s glad. 

This entire night already feels stolen, so he’s going to keep stealing as much as he can take. 

In the bedroom, Ben lays Rey down and spreads her out in the massive bed. He pulls the towel away and tosses it to the floor. He looks up at her face for a moment – her flushed cheeks, the softened haze in her eyes, the fact that it’s him she’s looking at with that contented, drifting smile. 

So he opens her legs and helps himself. 

Ben can’t decide what’s sweeter: The taste of her cunt or the way she breathes his name, high-pitched and lilting. The way her thighs simply slide all the way open once his head is between; or the way he feels her sigh and her entire body go slack the first time his tongue licks across her. 

Ben knows very quickly that he’s doomed. He only needs to hear it once – that half-gasp, half-cry Rey emits when he takes her clit between his lips – and knows he’s going to crave it like a drug. He spreads her open with his fingertips so his tongue can circle around her clit fully. So he can work his lips around it until her hands are clutching his hair and she’s releasing a mounting cry of his name. 

A second later his lips are wet. Ben knows she came, but he’s still so hungry for more of her. He licks her release from his lips slowly, giving her all the time to recover that he can bear.

“ _Ben_ ,” she whimpers, but does absolutely nothing to stop him when he starts licking at her again. Her hands are still in his hair, but her fingers are stroking and petting now as he laps up her cunt like he means to leave none of it left. This time, he spends a torturous amount of time kissing each of her lips before finally sinking his tongue inside her. 

She calls his name more loudly this time, her fingers curling more tightly in his hair. She starts pushing her hips up in little thrusts, and Ben’s not sure whether it’s his tongue fucking her or her cunt fucking his face. Either way, it only takes a few hits against a certain place that makes Rey spasm on his tongue until she’s close again. Ben tries to commit the spot to memory – Fully planning to bring her to tears next time, simply working that spot with his tongue. 

For now, he licks his way upwards again when he feels her starting to tremble apart, and a single seal of his lips around her clit makes her cry out and split open for him a second time. 

Somehow, she tastes even sweeter this time. 

* * *

Rey falls asleep after. Ben considers wrapping her in her robe and carrying her back to her own room. 

He doesn’t. 

Instead, he turns off the lights and curls himself around her. 

* * *

Predictably, Rey’s furious at herself when she wakes up in Ben Solo’s bed the next morning. He’s already gone – the clock numbers rudely declaring that she already missed her first meeting.

She sees him only once that day. He passes her in one of the atriums in the African Union headquarters, flanked by three businessmen who all look like carbon copies of each other. When their eyes meet, Ben turns his head so only she can see and deliberately licks his lips. 

Rey flushes and quickly flips him off. He looks downright smug, coughing to cover his laugh.

Rey won’t go to his room tonight. _She won’t._

But she can’t focus on anything after she gets back that night – Not work, not TV, not her book. She keeps unconsciously straining her ears for something through the wall... Then the urgent, surrendering knock finally comes just before midnight. 

Her pride and stubbornness eviscerated in a mere instant, Rey rushes to open the door. 

They don’t even make it to the bed this time. Ben presses her up against the wall and takes her right then and there, her own filthy words edging him on and betraying herself. 

But _fuck,_ it sure doesn’t feel like betrayal, when he drives in hard and fills her to the brim – fucking her right through all the limits of what she thought it was possible to feel. 

She tries not to think about the fact that it’s the last night.

She fails. 

Rey makes him go back to his own room after. He fixes her with a long, unreadable stare at that. Rey fidgets, crosses her arms, but doesn’t relent. What good would it be waking up together? When she still kind of hates everything about him whenever he’s _not_ fucking her within an inch of her life. Or working her with that lush mouth.

“Fine,” he says finally. “But first, tell me your number.”

Rey just ogles him for a second, stunned (yet again) by his audacity.

Already anticipating a fight, Ben shifts his feet. “I won’t go back to my own room without it.”

“What, you want me to just recite it?”

“I have a perfect memory for numbers.”

Rey rolls her eyes.

“Of course you do. Weirdo.”

She recites her cell number. He nods, drops his gaze, and without anything further retreats back to his own room. 

Rey doesn’t see him the next morning, but just as she’s boarding the plane she receives a text from an unknown number:

_Have a safe flight._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And their explosive THING has blown up already... We knew it would happen, but it's dealing with and figuring out what comes after that's going to trouble our bbs here.
> 
> I treasure all your thoughts and comments!! I still very much feel like I've got my heart straight out on my sleeve with this piece, so they mean the world. <3
> 
> Creep on my tumblr [here!](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/)


	3. Be My Mistake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But this just…” Rey pauses, wishing he’d take his hand away so she could think clearly. But even more, she wants to take his hand between her own and not let go of it for the next few hours. Why can’t he stop touching her so gently like this? Why can’t he let her just keep him straight and simple in her head for once?
> 
> “…it takes a lot of energy. This is too… demanding to live on those terms.”
> 
> Ben’s quiet for a long moment. Rey can’t look at him. Just the brush of his fingers along her face is already almost sending her to the breaking point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has shared their thoughts on this fic so far! It truly means the world to me <3
> 
> This chapter brings us into the next section, where we start to blend some real events into Rey and Ben's lives. I should disclaim that this fic isn't meant to endorse or condemn any particular political view, and I hope everyone can continue to enjoy it as a nonsense piece of fiction (which it is). It's certainly not my intention to start any ~discourse here - I'm only about using any means necessary to wallow in the Reylo drama. :')
> 
> Even at the risk of sounding repetitive: If you want to jam but also hear all your frustrations with the state of the world captured perfectly, go listen to [Love It If We Made It](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc). This fic wouldn't exist without it!

It’s the kind of unexamined, ill-defined attachment where Rey doesn’t save his number. She leaves the text thread open with only an impersonal string of digits for a heading. The seven letters of his name already take up such inchoate space in her mind and somewhere even deeper – A dark, messy tangle she has no desire to sink her fingers anywhere near. 

But with the way her fingers sometimes itch to open the thread after an especially difficult day, she knows she’s sinking deeper all the time.

The richest part is that she doesn’t even know _why_ , in the moments when she wishes he were there. If she wants a target to yell at so she can expel her frustrations, or if she just needs a good lay.

Or if she spent a few minutes too long thinking about his deep, dark eyes – The way they seem to shine in anguish at her just after he comes. Thinking about how his arms and his voice can be so rough and dominating, and yet his lips so careful and beseeching. 

Ben: _The Willard tonight?_

The text comes at 3 on a Friday. It’s the first message from him in two months, after Rey’s last invitation had been met with:

Ben: _Can’t. Girlfriend._

Ben, 10 minutes later: _Sorry._

Rey had considered responding with something along the lines of “That’s a lame excuse for not wanting to meet up. We both know no self-respecting woman would ever.”

It had taken Rey only seconds to recognize the odd simmer of anger at his text wasn’t directed at him, but shooting from a strange, ugly resentment towards the gorgeous, skirt suit-clad woman who’d been evoked in her mind from the word ‘Girlfriend’ in relation to Ben Solo. A minute later, the irony lodged in her throat of typing out denigrating words about said woman, when she herself had been bedding Ben regularly for a good six months now.

Rey had bitten her lip until she tasted blood and let the message go unanswered. Now:

Rey: _What happened to the girlfriend? She woke up and realized you are, in fact, an asshole?_

Ben: _Something like that._

Ben: _Tonight?_

Rey: _Fine._

Ben: _I’ll be at the bar in the lobby._

Rey walks to the hotel, anticipation making her mind run in circles. She hadn’t meant to say yes. She’d stared at his messages with a sour taste in her mouth before answering, picturing him calling up her number on his phone just next to the ex-girlfriend. Perhaps next to other women. Last behind them all. 

She wouldn’t be _surprised_ , exactly. But what had surprised her, what had really made her think she should wrangle back some self-control when it came to him, was the accompanying feeling of suffocation. Not until she’d capitulated and agreed to come had the vice grip on her insides released. 

In the entrance to the bar, she sees him first from behind. His tie is still tight, his jacket still straight and straining across the expanse of his shoulders. He lifts his head and throws back the last dregs of his glass. 

His eyes look distant and glazed. His lips are pinched to the side in some morose version of a frown. Rey goes to him. 

“Hey.”

He looks up at her (though even when he’s seated on a stool he’s somehow still taller than her), and all Rey sees is the unmistakable light that comes to his eyes; the way he straightens from his hunched pose as if new strength finds him. 

Sometimes Ben is a veritable wall of impossibility. Especially when they argue. Other times, he’s the clearest language Rey knows. 

“Hi, Rey.”

He buys her her favorite drink without needing to ask. 

They talk cordially about work. There’s enough to catch up on after two months that they don’t even wander near politics. 

It’s a good thing. Rey feels perfectly relaxed and unbothered, when Ben pays their tab and she follows him to the elevators. She doesn’t bristle when they step out on the tenth floor and his hand finds the small of her back. 

Behind the door of the hotel room, Rey drops her work bag on the floor. She turns, and a heartbeat later Ben’s close and cupping her face in his giant hands. 

He bends to kiss her, and Rey thinks of absolutely nothing but how much she missed it. 

He hitches her up effortlessly against him, holding her close as she works his tie and shirt open and sucks his tongue against hers. 

He spills her onto the bed, sheds his own clothes and peels her underwear down her thighs before she can do it herself. Rey’s gasp is swallowed by his skin when his body covers and fills her all at once. She breathes in his hair and she’s perfectly, disturbingly exhilarated to let her existence bleed into his so completely.

After, Ben curls close and can’t seem to keep his hand away from between her legs. Rey’s breathing has only just recovered, when he nuzzles her ear and murmurs in discomfort, “Can we go again? I just… I missed it.”

Rey stretches against him and can do nothing but nod. It hurts slightly, the overstimulation making her head spin when he pushes inside again. But his lips lave across the sensitive spots on her neck and she comes again as his fingers work her clit.

Rey says nothing while they shower together afterwards. Not when she washes his hair for him and he takes far more time than necessary soaping her body. Not when he lifts her onto the counter afterwards and stands between her legs to kiss her. Keeps kissing her for so long that the steam fades from the mirror

Not when they’re back in bed and moving together all over again. Not when he takes her from behind and Rey dissolves into a shaking mess with only Ben’s arms holding her together. 

“…beyond anything, Rey,” Ben’s murmuring nonsense into her ear. “It’s nothing in comparison. It can all burn.”

His words melting into deep groans against her ear sends Rey tumbling again. 

Only well after midnight, when Ben pulls underwear on and cracks the window to light a cigarette, does Rey say something. 

His phone is on the farthest corner of the nightstand. He hasn’t looked at it since they came upstairs, but Rey sees it light up. From her position curled up against the pillows, still naked, her eyes trail to Ben at the window. 

She has always hated being around cigarette smoke. She hates even more this otherworldly beauty – the pale planes of him lit by the silver nighttime light, a tiny sun burning out between his lips. 

“So you’re not going to talk about her?”

Ben looks confused when he turns towards her. In her head, Rey berates herself for letting the same fucking thing happen all over again. The second she’s alone with Ben, it’s as if all her rational principles blink from existence. 

Doesn’t she prize herself better than this?

“Her?”

“The girlfriend.”

Ben’s eyebrows rise. “Oh.” He plucks the cigarette from his mouth. “You care?”

Rey shrugs and looks away, pulling the sheets a little higher over her. 

“I had the feeling you wouldn’t,” he says, studying her from behind his walls again. It’s when he’s like this, his eyes impenetrable and his attention shrewd, when it’s so easy to push him away. 

Rey almost welcomes these moments – When she’s finally rid of the urge to cling close and never let go. She feels some semblance of control again, when she wants to keep him out. 

“It’s not like you tell me about other guys you fuck around with.”

She hasn’t, to be honest. Told him _or_ fucked around. The few guys she’s been with since Ben just don’t make her feel the same. As if she can’t enjoy sex anymore if all the conversation before it stays civil.

Rey truly hates giving him so much credit, but there’s also the fact that Ben is an infuriatingly singular talent in the area. For half a second, she wonders if he genuinely doesn’t know. 

Then Rey really hears what he said. She crosses her arms, expression moving towards stony.

“That’s what you call a relationship? ‘Fucking around’?”

God, Rey is loath to think what terms he’d use for their arrangement. 

Ben rolls his eyes, fingers plucking the cigarette away from his mouth. 

“I know I called her that, and I’m sorry for brushing you off. But it really didn’t amount to much more.”

Rey tries not to show her shock at an apology from Ben Solo. She really hadn’t expected it, nor even been looking for it. After two months of not seeing him, she really just needed some idea of where things stood. If there might be another two months or more before next time. If that was just how things would be. 

“I didn’t…” Rey starts, falters for a second. She pushes on, “You don’t owe me an apology. We don’t owe each other anything.” Rey is surprised to see his expression shutter off further at that. She’s really lost now, because he’d been the one to shut her out so he could “fuck around” with someone else; while she’d been the one to open his message almost daily just to scowl at it. 

Rey remembers the chaos in her head during her walk here earlier in the evening. She remembers hating the insecurity that had made a nest in her chest, and just like that she’s angry again. Angry enough to just say it. 

“So nothing amounts to anything to you, huh? It’s all just fucking around. I guess that explains why you can do what you do, then.”

Cigarette burning out between his fingers, Ben lifts a single eyebrow. The downward slant to his lips could cut stone.

“What I do?”

“Treat life like a pissing contest. Do a job concerning countless people’s welfare and still think yourself superior.”

Slowly, Ben’s eyes narrow in her direction. 

“We’re talking about my job, now? Your old favorite.” He mashes the cigarette out against the windowsill, paying no attention to the black streak it leaves. He drops the remnants into the wastebasket before turning his gaze back towards the window. He says off-handedly, “I got a promotion, by the way. I’m Under Secretary for Political Affairs now.”

“Congratu-fucking-lations.”

He turns towards Rey with an audible huff. “What’s this actually about? You’re angry because I had tact for once in my life and didn’t talk about another woman to you?”

“I’m wondering if you see women the same way you see career advancement.”

“What are you implying, exactly?”

“If they’re plentiful and replaceable.”

Some tiny give in Rey’s tone makes it not quite the charge she wanted it to be. And really, it’s not that she’s trying to hurt him. More so she’s just trying not to get hurt herself. 

Ben hears too much, of course, because his face changes. One second he’s mirroring her anger that seems to come from nowhere. The next, he understands. 

“Rey…” 

His mouth closes again. It takes him three aborted movements towards the bed before he finally makes it to sit down at the edge, just beside her. Rey looks away, gaze resolutely fixed beyond him, until his fingers appear to turn her head towards him. When their eyes meet, Rey knows he can see. He can see the caverns of her eyes betraying the indifference she’s taking such pains to project.

“Women like you certainly aren’t plentiful. That’d be impossible, actually.”

His eyes are shifting deep and soft again, and Rey’s risking falling into them so far she won’t ever be able to reach air.

“Because you couldn’t abide more of me?”

“Because you’re singular. I’ll admit, a lot of the things you accuse me of have grounds. But I would hate for you to think I’m the kind of man who takes up this habit indiscriminately.”

‘This’ is accompanied by a vague gesture around the room. She knows what he means, of course, but she’s hesitant to interpret it the way her mind seems to want her to.

His thumb is still there, stroking slowly back and forth along her jaw. 

Bewildered, Rey takes strength from her usual defensive tactics. 

“You know I wouldn’t be caught dead being your girlfriend or anything.”

“I know that all too well,” he says, quickly but with amusement warming his voice.

“But this just…” Rey pauses, wishing he’d take his hand away so she could think clearly. But even more, she wants to take his hand between her own and not let go of it for the next few hours. Why can’t he stop touching her so gently like this? Why can’t he let her just keep him straight and simple in her head for once?

“…it takes a lot of energy. And I just don’t want to be part of some rotation, you know? The substitute while the girlfriend’s on-again off-again. This is too… demanding to live on those terms.”

Ben’s quiet for a long moment. Rey can’t look at him. Just the brush of his fingers along her face is already almost sending her to the breaking point.

“It’s not going to be on again,” Ben finally says, voice pitched low and far, far too intimate. Rey hates when he’s quiet and honest like this – hates the way it makes her want to trust him. 

Hates the way it _does_ make her trust him. 

“It’s definitely finished for good. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have texted you. There were… more moments than I’d like to admit during the last two months when I was tempted to talk to you anyway. But you deserve better than that, and because this is so… consuming, when I see you. I wouldn’t ask you to be here with me if it caused any more reason for guilt.”

Finally, Rey turns her gaze towards him. Ben’s face is half in shadow, but he looks vaguely mournful. 

“More reason for guilt?”

“You know,” he waves his free hand, mustering something of a half-smile. “Sleeping with the enemy and all that.”

“Oh. Right.”

He certainly doesn’t feel like the enemy right now. When his touch is reverent and he’s sitting here beside her in bed, with all his massive size and aggressive angles melted down in moonlight. 

It certainly doesn’t feel that way when he’s moving inside her, his whispers tender and mouth soft against her skin.

Finally, he draws his hand back. Rey breathes out in relief. 

“Just for the record.” Ben slides a hand through his hair as his voice returns to status quo. “There are plenty of women who would love to be ‘my girlfriend or anything’.”

Rey rolls her eyes, but finds herself smiling. The bravado in his voice is all jest. 

“God help them.”

“More like God help _me._ ” His voice remains within safe levels, but he leans just a little bit closer. A bit too close. “Women at my feet and I’m here with the one who can’t stand me.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“Completely. But haven’t you realized by now? It’s partially just to get your attention. I love when you get all riled up.”

“In that case, I’m happy to tell you that I have no further moral qualms with your profession of advancing America’s neoconservative agenda.” 

Ben leans in and takes her mouth with his own. He holds it for a long time, Rey’s lips tingling when he pulls back.

There’s a distinctly sad smile on his mouth when he says, “If only that were true.”

* * *

They can’t talk about it. It’s been months, and Rey can still hardly bear thinking about it. 

The day after the election, Rey and all her colleagues had stayed home. Crying for the state of their country. Despairing that it was certainly only a matter of time before their entire sector got shuttered when aid funds inevitably dried up; directed to the military or some other antiquated, self-aggrandizing institution.

If she sees Ben on a particularly bad day, she sometimes can’t help letting loose on him.

He never gives her the reaction she wants. Instead of swinging back, he’ll retreat behind inscrutable recalcitrance. 

“A Muslim ban? The State Department is really going to enforce this?”

“It’s my responsibility to disseminate new policy to our Ambassadors around the world and make sure our Embassies’ visa practices are up to date. I don’t particularly like it, no. But will I do my job? Yes. Yes, I will.” 

“You’re in a position to block a policy of intolerance from becoming the face of our country. Don’t you ever stop for a second and think about the impact you might have? What have you put in all these years for, if you never want to make a difference?”

“We’re not talking about this, Rey.”

That’s usually where Ben shuts her down. Rey will stew in her frustration for a while until Ben distracts her in other ways. 

But when she’s not with him, she’ll think back to how she let him distract her. And when the next terrible headline drops, she feels ashamed.

She cannot fathom how the change in administration doesn’t make Ben view his job differently. If he’s conflicted, he doesn’t show it. And if it’s really true that he feels no discomfort whatsoever, then Rey wonders how she can ever live with herself for everything she surrenders to him. For the sanctimonious certainty she lets him keep. 

She’s with him in another hotel, still dressed, when her phone buzzes with breaking news of the first proposed abortion ban. 

Ben hears Rey’s sharp intake of breath, and leans over to see. His head whips away like the words burn.

When Rey looks up at him with veritable fire in her eyes, he says flatly, “You know I have no part in domestic policy. Especially not at the state level.”

“ _That’s_ your defense? ‘I still stand behind my government, but this was a different sector’?”

“What do you want me to say, Rey? Of course it isn’t right. But arguing about it won’t change it.”

“ _‘Won’t change it?’_ Ben, that argument’s beneath you. You’re the one in a position to take a stand on these things, but you just keep on putting one foot in front of the other, looking nowhere but the little space of your own desk, and staying willfully blind to the part you’re playing in enabling all of this.”

He’s looking away, fists clenched at his sides. 

“I’m not talking about this.”

The tired old refrain. 

“It must be nice. To be in such a position of privilege that you don’t feel these things affecting your way of life. For the misogyny our President wants to institutionalize to be something you can just _choose_ not to talk about.”

“I spend every second of every day talking and thinking about nothing but these issues.”

“Yeah, but don’t worry about the other people out there _living_ it. Who are victims of it.”

“Jesus, Rey,” his swear cuts her words off mid-air, real aggravation twisting his features. “Can’t we just leave it and fuck already?”

The room goes very, very quiet. Ben’s anger drops away in an instant as his own words come back to him in a terrible echo. Meanwhile, Rey’s fury has already reached meltdown. Her glare could cut glass.

“No. No we can’t.”

Ben visibly flinches, watching with the heavy weight of regret as Rey gathers up her bag. They only came into the room mere minutes ago. 

“Rey, wait. I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t call.”

Rey slams the hotel room door after her. Ben can hear her stomping to the elevator. Slowly, he sinks onto the edge of the bed. With a sigh so deep it should only befit a man decades older than him, Ben lowers his head into his hands. 

* * *

Rey’s the one who ends up texting first, because she just can’t believe it. She doesn’t _want_ to believe it. 

Rey: _Tell me it isn’t true._

Walking into her office building that morning, Rey had frozen in her tracks when she saw the news headlines scrolling past on the TVs.

‘Top DOS Staff tapped for Foreign Policy Advisor.’

Above the words, footage of Ben getting out of a car and walking into the White House. Ben, walking beside the President. Rey feels like she’ll be sick right then and there. 

Ben: _I’m sorry._

Rey’s still shell-shocked when she gets home that night, not quite able to feel anything yet. She’s lying in bed, not sleeping, when another message arrives from Ben’s number. Still without a name. 

Ben: _I don’t expect this to change anything, but knowing you would hate me for this almost made it worthless._

Rey stares at the screen for ages. 

Rey: _Almost._

She swipes left, and all trace of him is gone from her phone. 

Rey curls up in bed, desperately wishing she could purge the rest of him away just as easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phase 1 of their drama commences! :(( But since you guys might have noticed by now how these two literally cannot keep their hands off each other, you'd be right to have a sneaking suspicion they're going to find their way back.... Somehow. 
> 
> Comments give me life! And here's my [tumblr](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) for more Reylo flailing on demand. :)


	4. Sincerity Is Scary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the plane takes off, Rey’s never been happier to leave American airspace. 
> 
> In the last few weeks, she’s barely been able to read the news. No matter how many times she reads the words ‘Mr. Solo, Foreign Policy Advisor to the President’, they never start feeling like anything less than a blunt knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the comments on the last chapter were like Christmas and my birthday all wrapped up in one! You guys have no idea how absolutely thrilled and touched I am that so many of you had such strong reactions and opinions to share from the last chapter. This story has been consuming my life and it seriously makes me happier than I can express that other people have been dragged in too. <3
> 
> You might notice I upped the chapter count... It's likely going to end up being 10, but I've been working and working and working some more on the ending and it just keeps blowing up. I'm really going to do my best to finish it off though, so there won't be too much of a gap in posting when we get towards the end. 
> 
> As always, credit where it's due to the [inspirational title track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc&list=RD1Wl1B7DPegc&start_radio=1) and my mood board queen [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/pseuds/KyloTrashForever).

Rey has never more looked forward to a work trip. She wishes the month in Kampala could just be stretched to a year. When the plane takes off, she’s never been happier to leave American airspace. 

In the last few weeks, she’s barely been able to read the news. No matter how many times she reads the words ‘Mr. Solo, Foreign Policy Advisor to the President’ or ‘Ben Solo voices his approval’, they never start feeling like anything less than a blunt knife.

That first breath when she gets off the plane feels like the first fresh air in weeks. 

Rey has never visited the Uganda office before. She practically glues her nose to the window of the cab as the car honks and rumbles its way through crowded streets. Finally, Rey spots the familiar logo on the front gate of a fast-approaching building. It’s just this side of ramshackle, and yet just as quaint as Rey pictured. 

“Here, it’s just here!” Rey tells the driver, gathering up her bags as the car pulls up. Someone is already waiting outside for her.

“Sanyu!”

“Miss Rey! So good to see you!” 

Rey grins as she embraces the woman who’s become her fast friend after a year of emails, messages, and frantic phone calls throughout the belabored process of starting up the Uganda program.

“You’re finally going to take me for Luwombo tonight, right?”

“As much as you can eat.”

Rey eats a lot, then a little more. Sanyu and the five other local staff members care nothing for bemoaning US politics. Instead, they catch Rey up to speed on all the reasons the local judiciary office has been so difficult to finally sign their partnership agreement with. It feels more like gossip, as Sanyu throws in a few impersonations of the judiciary staff they’ve been meant to work with. Rey laughs almost the whole night. 

After a few days catching up with the local office, Rey travels out from Kampala to meet with the smaller women’s empowerment groups her organization has been mentoring. She spends almost a whole miraculous week without cell phone service, steeped in the kind of work that doesn’t feel like work at all. The kind that gives meaning back to everything.

But even her month-long respite, as it turns out, isn’t meant to be. 

Upon her return to Kampala, Rey’s car is met with alarm.

“An emergency alert and travel ban came from the US Embassy,” Sanyu tells Rey with urgency in her voice. 

Rey’s only halfway out of the car. “What was the alert?”

“American citizens are being recalled. There was a summons for you specifically.”

Rey frowns in confusion. “You mean a summons for all American aid workers?”

“Someone from the Embassy came here to the office yesterday. She said a return flight has been arranged for you already, and there’ll be a security escort to bring you to the airport. You’re supposed to call the Embassy upon your return to leave immediately.”

Rey’s never felt this important in her damn life. She distinctly doesn’t like it.

Already, she’s annoyed. She has dozens of reports to write from her visits. New proposal ideas to outline. But even here, she can’t be allowed her peace. 

The security escort comes for Rey that very night. A black car with tinted windows, a Foreign Service Officer in a suit, the cadre completed by two Marines with rifles.

Rey turns back to Sanyu before she goes anywhere. Rey embraces her. She fervently wishes they’d had more time in person. 

“Travel safe, Miss Rey,” Sanyu says before letting her go. 

“Thank you, Sanyu. Be well.”

Rey’s bag is put into the car. From the back seat, Rey turns and waves before the car turns a corner. When she sits down again and stares ahead, it’s with an aimless feeling of dread. She swallows around discomfiting guilt that she’s here in this armored car, alone. 

Rey is put on a passenger plane, business class. She’s told someone will be there to greet her when she arrives at Dulles, though she has no idea why that’s necessary. They’ve already needlessly cut her trip short – Can’t they just leave her alone already?

Sure enough, at arrivals there’s a man in a crisp suit right in the front. Rather than holding up an anonymous sign with her name, he recognizes her by face and comes straight to her, taking her bag from her hand before she can protest.

“If you would follow me.”

Rey follows, out to another armored car with tinted windows idling in a secured-off area just outside the terminal. The man puts her bag in the trunk before opening the back door for her, wordless. 

Rey can’t help a slight roll of her eyes. She sighs dramatically as she gets in. 

The door closes and Rey sighs again. 

Then she turns and realizes she’s not alone in the car. 

Breath and all words flee from her. 

Ben is just there on the other side of the backseat. And he’s looking at her with eyes so wide and wet, it’s as if he thought his eyes would never rest on her again. They both simply stare at each other as the car starts to move. As it threads into traffic and pulls onto the highway. 

It’s been longer than two months. 

Finally, they both rush to speak.

“Ben, I don’t-”

“Rey, I-”

Rey goes quiet. She crosses her arms in a clear gesture that she’s the one owed an explanation here. Ben takes a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. 

Rey is caught off guard by the familiarity of the movement – The way it makes something ache inside her. 

He looks so tired. It makes the ache worse. 

“I’m sure you’re angry for getting pulled out prematurely. But just… thank you, for listening.”

“You haven’t told me why.”

Ben’s quiet for a long time, looking out the window now. 

“You’ll see.”

Rey huffs loud enough for him to hear.

He keeps looking out the window into the night, but Rey’s gaze drops to where his hands are clenched together in his lap. His hands wrapped tight around each other, almost as if physically restraining himself from reaching out. 

Slowly, she takes in the rest of him. His suit is a clear upgrade. Certainly a tailored fit, she’s never seen him dressed better. But past the immaculate suit, he seems… diminished. His shoulders are hunched, his entire frame curled inward. His hair lays at all angles – the evidence of a long day of anxiously pushing his hands through it. The edges of his mouth and eyes seem painfully tight. 

The spirit to him that was once so untouchable now seems only steps away from defeated.

Rey finds her fingers itching to slide between his hands, to smooth through his hair, to soothe away those lines in his face… 

She valiantly fights off the urge.

“So this is a perk of your new position, huh? You get to summon people from wherever they may be. Even as far as Uganda. But there was a whole travel ban for all US citizens in country. You need a good reason for one of those, don’t you?”

“You’ll see, Rey,” he repeats. When Rey sighs, he adds in a soft appeal, “Just please don’t hate me. At least… no more than you already do.”

Rey chews her lip, unsure what to say. She looks out the window, until she realizes they’re only driving further into Virginia, rather than back towards DC. 

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“My place.”

Rey’s head turns back to him, eyes widening in surprise. The entire time she’s known him, this has never been done. 

Rey opens her mouth, looks at him again, then stays quiet. There’s absolutely none of his usual pride, none of his bluster or wit. There’s no trace of the Professional Ben Solo whom Rey has spent so much energy rallying against. Right now, he seems completely and utterly hollowed out. 

She wants nothing but to gather these pieces of him in her arms.

His hands are visibly shaking when the car pulls up to a modern, two-story house of white walls and wide windows. 

They get out of the car. Ben exchanges a few words with the driver, then he carries her bag to the door with Rey following behind. 

Ben opens the door and lets Rey in before him. The house is dark, but Rey can immediately see it’s sparsely furnished and spotless. The inevitable result of a hired cleaning staff plus an inhabitant who doesn’t bother with a sentimental abundance of possessions. 

Rey hears Ben close the door behind him, hears him set her bag on the ground. She hears him take the few steps towards her. 

She turns with questions flooding off her tongue. But then he reaches her, and pulls her so deeply into his arms that she’s enveloped in him completely. 

“Rey.”

Her name is an endless, raw whisper into her hair, and Rey’s heart starts thudding in pain when she realizes every inch of him is shaking around her. 

“Ben?” she breathes in helpless question, her own arms already clutching him tight in an attempt to hold him together. There’s just so much of him, too much to fit in her arms. And Rey wasn’t anywhere near prepared. She was nowhere near ready for how much she would feel – How it would tip her entire world on its side to feel Ben’s voice breaking around her name, again and again and again. 

“I-I don’t understand, Ben,” she finally says, once she’s completely helpless and desperate to provide whatever comfort he needs. 

Ben turns his head, pressing his lips to her forehead everywhere he can reach before he finally untangles from her. Rey feels stricken clean through, when she sees his eyes are red and his jaw is trembling 

Wordless, he keeps hold of her hand and guides her through dark rooms. He turns on a widescreen TV in what must be the living room. The burst of light makes Rey flinch as Ben flicks through a few channels before landing on a news station. 

Ben’s hand keeps its grip on hers. He looks only at her, as if still reassuring himself of her presence each consecutive second, while Rey struggles to make sense of what she’s seeing on the screen.

_‘Mass outbreak of violence follows bomb detonation in Kampala. ADF mounts attacks as death toll rises.’_

The headlines continue, accompanied by reels of footage each more gruesome than the last. The minutes stretch on as Rey watches in shock. 

Footage keeps replaying of the bomb explosion in a marketplace. A marketplace Rey recognizes. Less than a mile from the office where Rey said goodbye to Sanyu less than a day ago. 

The explosion replays, and Ben makes a strangled noise in his throat. He moves to press himself against her again, arms surrounding her to once again make sure she inhabits this space just beside him. Rey’s hands circle one of his wrists, anchoring herself.

“I-I don’t understand,” she finally says faintly. “How did you…”

Ben says nothing, just holds her closer when Rey starts to tremble, her body going numb with the shock of the world’s horrors so near to her own being. The footage keeps looping before her, and Rey’s struggling to breathe around the fact that this was very nearly her reality. 

Then the words ‘death toll’ cut through her haze of incomprehension, and Rey is hyperventilating and clutching Ben to stay standing. 

“Sanyu. All our partners. Our staff in the office…” She pulls back just enough to grasp for the sight of Ben’s face. If he was able to get her out, surely he must be able to help…

Then she remembers the car coming to take her to the airport. Alone. 

There is a small part of Rey’s brain that knows the US government can only intervene for US citizens. But the rest of her is shutting down, refusing to make sense of any part of all this. 

It takes a minute of gasping for breath, Ben the one holding her together now, before Rey can speak a full sentence.

“You… you had intelligence. You knew there was a bombing planned as part of coordinated attacks.”

“Yes,” he says, his voice already pained and resigned. He seems to know what’s coming, but he doesn’t loosen his hold on her even a little bit.

“You could have warned people – passed the intelligence to local authorities so they could evacuate… You could have worked through diplomatic channels to prevent it before anything happened.”

“Stopping an attack before it happens is extraordinarily difficult even in countries with high-functioning security forces. In a place like this, it’s all but impossible. That would have only caused more panic.”

Rey’s crying now, ruining Ben’s suit jacket with clinging fingers, tears, and snot. He doesn’t seem to care a single bit. One of his hands comes to cover the back of her head, holding her securely against him as she shakes with the tears. 

“Sanyu was my _friend_ …” she gasps. “All my in-country colleagues and partners… Some I’ve worked with for years and who knows what’s happened to them now… What will happen.” Rey turns her face deeper into his chest. “You should have done more. If the US _cared_ to help, there must have been more… You should have told me and I could’ve taken our staff to shelter…”

Ben shakes his head, his mouth a trembling frown as he clutches her closer. “You’d still have been there in the middle of the unrest. This might destabilize the country for weeks. I didn’t know if flights would be able to leave, after the first wave.”

The guilt is threatening to bury her, now. Rey’s never done anything to deserve this – To deserve some right to life and safety that the people she just left behind aren’t equally entitled to. 

Suddenly, she feels angry at _everything._ At the militants who thought they would gain something from violence. At the international order that remains complacent.

“I should have stayed,” Rey gasps, nearly beyond sense. “You had no _right_ to pull me out. I could have helped, could have helped keep people safe. You should have let me stay.”

Ben just tugs her impossibly closer, almost greedy in his determination to have every bit of her in his arms – every inch of her pressed against himself. 

“I don’t give a shit about the rest of them. After the briefing yesterday about the planned attack, your name was handed to me on a list of Americans in the country and I just… I lost it, Rey. I lost it completely. And I didn’t give a single fuck about anything but getting you back.” He squeezes her against his chest. “Getting you right back here.”

Rey sobs openly now. “You selfish, arrogant asshole. _IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou._ ”

“Yes. I’m a selfish bastard.”

But his words collapse towards the end. And the way his arms empty of strength to hold her with trembling gratitude again, it betrays a man who suffered the most terrifying twenty-four hours of his life.

The first twenty-four hours when he realized he might as well be hollow, because his heart doesn’t beat in his own chest anymore. At the moment of epiphany, it had been beating approximately seven thousand miles away.

Rey’s head is foggy and throbbing when she wakes the next morning. She’s in a wide, heavenly bed with black sheets. Alone. Sun is streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows. 

Slowly, she remembers. Ben carrying her upstairs to his bedroom. She’d been cursing him and crying still, even after she went entirely weak in his arms. 

“I know. I know,” he’d kept murmuring as he undressed her, threaded her arms and head through one of his own old t-shirts, and helped her into bed. He’d disappeared into the bathroom for a moment, then returned with a wet washcloth in his hand. 

“I know, darling,” he’d whispered as he cleaned the salty tears from her face. 

Rey covers her face with her hands for a long moment, paralyzed by the returning memories of what caused it all. Stunned by the cold, hard truth in morning light. 

Ben saved her life. 

Ben had probably pulled improper strings using his influence to save her life; and she’d cursed him for it. 

She’d said she hated him. 

Rey’s body can’t hold any more guilt. 

Moving in a daze, Rey shuffles into the adjoining bathroom to splash water on her face. It brings no improvement. 

She looks at herself in the mirror, fingering the soft, worn material of the giant Harvard Rowing t-shirt she apparently slept in. 

She can’t even muster an eye roll at this tiny, predictable look into Ben’s past. 

Rey shuffles from the bathroom, then out of the bedroom. She holds the bannister tightly as she descends the stairs with swaying, barefoot steps. 

“Rey?”

At the bottom of the stairs, she turns at the sound of his voice. He’s in sweatpants and a black t-shirt, standing in the doorway of what looks like the kitchen. He’s holding a coffee mug, which he immediately sets down when he sees her. His hair is a mess.

Rey can’t bear to think through things. She simply gives in to the rush of relief and comfort that wells over her at the sight of him.

She whispers his name and holds her arms the slightest bit out towards him. He’s there in a breath, wrapping her up close. The strength in his arms around her gives some sense and solidity back to the world. 

“I don’t hate you,” is all Rey can say. She says it five times, for good measure. She ends with, “I promise.”

“I know, Rey,” he says.

He says it again. Rey remembers him whispering ‘I know’ as he kissed her that single, gentle time the night before, as he pulled the blankets up over her.

“I promise, too,” Ben whispers just beside her ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....aaand what do we think? Did Ben atone a bit? Is he still an oblivious/selfish a-hole? 50/50? While I absolutely loved writing this part, I honestly have no idea how I would react if I were Rey in this kind of situation. I can't wait to hear all your opinions!
> 
> You can also come dump all your thoughts and feels with me on [tumblr](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) :D


	5. I Like America & America Likes Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s not worth it_ , she wants to tell him. He looks as if he’s been drained to the bone – like it’s taking all his energy just to stay standing. _It’s not worth letting them bleed you dry._
> 
> But she doesn’t want to fight tonight. Rey can’t make herself raise her voice against him, not when he’s laying himself in her hands, paper-thin. 
> 
> He opens his eyes, blinking at her slowly. The barest trace of hope shines there, like it’s all he can muster. 
> 
> “Will you stay?” he murmurs, lips brushing against her wrist. 
> 
> Rey knew the answer the second she saw him tonight. 
> 
> “Mmhm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took a few days longer than usual! I was second-guessing later sections towards the end of the fic and wanted to figure them out first, since those threads really start here. But I'm now getting close to writing all the way through to the end, which means *fingers crossed* there shouldn't be much delay between chapters anymore! :)
> 
> So not only did [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/pseuds/KyloTrashForever) make my mood board but she also power beta'd through almost a solid 20K words of this in like one day?! What even?? <33
> 
> And yet another plug to go listen to [the song that inspired the title!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

Talk of impeachment starts ramping up a year into the term. Rey finds Ben infuriatingly nonchalant about it all. 

“You’re not worried the Special Counsel’s investigation will finally find the smoking gun? That your boss will be removed in disgrace and your entire reputation goes down the tank with him?”

Next to her in bed – _his_ bed – Ben just shrugs. He’s scrolling through some documents on his tablet that appear to be about a thousand pages long. 

“Won’t happen,” he mutters.

Rey rolls her eyes and huffs, laying her phone aside.

“Just how can you be so sure? How can you trust that he didn’t do all the things he’s accused of? You can’t look me in the eye and honestly say you don’t think there were any underhanded dealings with Russia during the campaign.”

Ben doesn’t visibly react for a long moment. Then Rey notices his bottom lip becoming wedged progressively tighter between his teeth. Finally, he switches off the tablet with a sigh and lays it aside. He shifts onto his side to face her, expression exhausted but annoyingly indulgent. 

“Whatever might or might not have happened during the campaign, the Special Counsel will never find smoking gun evidence to make the Senate Republicans turn against us. It’ll never happen.”

Rey scowls, sinking down farther against the pillows as she crosses her arms tightly across her chest. She’s distracted from the point, now.

“I hate when you say that,” she mutters, looking away from him.

“Say what?”

“‘Us.’ You shouldn’t be one of them. You don’t belong there.”

Ben sighs beside her. At the same time, his arms slide around her midsection to lazily pull her against him. Her head still turned away, Ben nuzzles against her neck. 

“The self-centered bureaucrat only out to advance the bottom line? It seems the perfect place for me.”

Rey finally turns her head. It takes effort to remember what she wanted to say – to keep a hold of any rational thought at all when she’s suddenly sinking into the depths of his eyes.

“It’s easy to think that way. It’s easy to think you’re no better – so you have no responsibility to try correcting the wrongs.”

Ben breaks eye contact. He says nothing, just releases another quiet sigh as his lips begin tracing along Rey’s hairline. 

Rey’s fingers curl against his upper arm. 

“There’s so much wrong today,” Rey whispers, her voice more musing than actual speech. “Sometimes it’s hard just to get up and face another day. I know it’s a different kind of strength you must have, to survive in the eye of the storm.”

Ben’s lips are trailing slowly up into Rey’s hair. His whisper is tucked away there in her tresses, like a secret taking root. 

“What if selling my soul was the price of survival?”

Rey catches her breath, the appeal setting her mind racing. She’s never heard him say anything like that before. Never heard him confess to being anything other than unbothered by all that he’s a part of. 

But the certainty Rey has always felt of some deeper layer below his sanctimonious shell; some warmth in him that always keeps drawing her back into his arms – it raises its head and tugs Rey even deeper into his orbit. Somewhere during the time they’ve spent together, Rey stopped digging in search of it. Somewhere along the way, Rey’s challenges and needling all took on the purpose of making him recognize what she already saw. 

The change in Rey happened shortly after Uganda. After he’d done everything in his power to evacuate her from a soon-to-be warzone. After she’d spent three whole days here in his house. Ben had stayed with her the whole time – holding her, feeding her, bathing her, comforting her through waves of shuddering relief, angry guilt, and sobbing loss. On the fourth morning, when Rey finally managed to sleep through the night, Ben had kissed her gently awake and murmured, “I’m sorry, darling. I really have to go in today.”

Rey had blinked slowly to take him in. “What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

Rey had no idea. No idea what day it was – or that he’d missed two days of the week to stay here with her. 

“You can stay,” he murmured as he untangled himself from her and the sheets. “As long as you want. I shouldn’t be too late tonight.”

With bleary, half-open eyes, Rey had watched from the bed as Ben went to his closet and started sifting through the hangers. As he dressed himself in a sharp, jet-black suit. As he tightened a red tie at his throat while walking over to the bathroom. As he coated his fingers in hair product and set his bedhead to right. 

Even straightening his tie in the mirror, Rey suddenly realized he looked no different in her eyes to when he woke up next to her, bare.

Now, finally, Rey’s here again – in his bed and in his arms, and all she wants is for him to see what she sees. 

A man that could define himself by so much more than association with rumors of impeachment.

“There’s always time to win it back,” Rey murmurs, her fingers sliding tighter around Ben’s arm as his lips continue trailing through her hair. 

He releases a breath of laughter against her head. 

“That assumes I ever had a soul to begin with.”

* * *

His number is in her phone again, this time with a proper name and everything. She knows his address, and knows she’ll be greeted by his crooked half-smile at the door no matter how late she comes over. Even when her arrival comes unannounced.

In the weeks after Uganda, she came over all the time. He was the sole person in whose presence she let herself break down. 

Sanyu had escaped safely, but some of Rey’s other colleagues hadn’t been so lucky.

After the first few nights of mourning alone in her own apartment, she gave into the truth that his arms were a much better place to cry. 

Somehow it never made her feel weak, coming apart in front of him. She remembers all too well the mess he’d been that night she arrived back. She has nothing to be ashamed of. 

Ben would only stroke her hair, whisper that irritating, innocuous lie that everything’s okay, until night by night it gradually became something closer to truth. 

Now, Rey tries to keep boundaries. She doesn’t stay over more than one night anymore. She doesn’t let herself leave anything there. But it’s just so easy – too easy – to fall in headfirst. To say yes when he texts.

Ben: _Come over tonight? I’ll order Indian._

On weekday mornings, she’ll ride into DC with him. She’ll get out of the car several discreet blocks away from her office. Ben’s driver knows her name by now. 

On weekend mornings, they usually stay in bed until at least noon, after at least two languid rounds of morning sex. Sometimes she’ll cook in his kitchen, while the only help he provides are reaching things from the top shelf or comments like “Your ass looks great in those leggings.”

There are other reasons too, of course, why she can’t stay. When one of Ben’s several phones buzzes, and it’s one he can’t ignore.

She knows his regretful look by heart now, before he leaves the room to answer.

“Yes, sir. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Rey’s easy glow will already have subsided, by the time he comes back into the room.

“Duty calls?” she asks with all the indifference she can muster.

“Afraid so. You can stay if you want.”

He always says this. Even though she never does. 

“That’s okay, I should be going anyway.”

* * *

Then the news stories begin surfacing about the migrant border camps, and staying away from Ben suddenly becomes much easier. 

Ben: _Don’t watch NBC today. It was an ambush._

It’s already too late. Rey saw the interview live. 

Andrea Mitchell: “Mr. Solo, how can this administration expect to come to fair negotiations with Mexico about border and immigration policies, while we’re engaging in activity right on that same border that could be considered to violate human rights?”

Ben Solo: “Once a national of any other country decides to cross a US border, they become rightly subject to the ‘extreme vetting’ the President has put into effect for the safety of every American citizen. We are doing everything in our power to negotiate a border policy with Mexico that will allow for a humane and more efficient processing system, without compromising the safety of American citizens.”

“But Mr. Solo, can you tell me how arbitrarily separating children from their parents supports the President’s ‘extreme vetting’ policy?”

“That is not a practice endorsed by – ”

“But it hasn’t been stopped by the President, either. The psychological trauma that’s been documented on both parents and child as a result of that separation is being used as a tacit weapon to discourage immigration, isn’t that true?”

“Separating families was never part of the President’s immigration policy, no. Whether that’s been unevenly carried out by border patrol officers on a case-by-case basis is another matter.”

“What about the matter of whether the President approves of such a practice?”

“I’m afraid I cannot speak to the President’s personal beliefs.”

“What about your own then, Mr. Solo?”

“I’m not sure how that’s relevant.”

“Well, as the President’s main advisor and implementer for Foreign Policy, wouldn’t you agree that the practice of detaining children has had an impact much in line with the US’ foreign policy goals along the southern border? Mainly, cutting down the number of families attempting to enter the US with large numbers of dependents?”

“Although family separation was never official practice, it is not without its overall benefit. But this administration will never condone the regrettable psychological damage it causes.”

“Hm, but it will tacitly allow the practice to continue.”

“The President’s priority is to clarify the legitimacy of border security procedures. Once the most pressing challenges of overcrowding are handled and facility space exists to process families together, that will be made a priority.”

Rey: _Too late. I’d say you should be ashamed, but I want to think the reason you texted me was because you already are._

He doesn’t reply. Rey feels the distinct urge to break something.

She can’t bear to see him until the following week. When she finally does come to his house, the interview isn’t something she can let simmer in the background. 

“Ben. For god’s sake. I _know_ you don’t approve of separating kids from their families. How can your fucking job or loyalty to that asshole somehow be so strong that it’s enough to make you sell your integrity and sit there on TV defending _concentration camps–_ ”

“First of all, that word gets thrown around on liberal media every day, but if you’d actually been down to the border you’d know it’s completely disproportionate to–”

“Have _you_ been to the border? Seen the overcrowding and the inhumane conditions with your own eyes?”

“I have, actually,” Ben bites back, harsh sparks in his eyes that make Rey cool a few degrees and listen. “I visited with the President last month. No, it’s not a pretty sight. No, I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone. But the numbers are beyond what any facility can handle, and sometimes the alternates are worse. Sometimes the choice is between an overcrowded, dirty room, and turning people back out into the desert with nothing.”

“Please, as if those sites are some sanctuary, now? The benevolent US taking in the poor and weak?”

“You don’t think they are poor and weak? You don’t think they have a legitimate reason for seeking entry?”

Rey bursts out in a noise of frustration. “ _Of course I do!_ But you can’t stand here and tell me in all honesty that you think your President’s immigration policies are really trying to protect and help those people. You can’t tell me the whole over-militarized, dehumanizing structure of border control isn’t built for the express purpose of breaking migrants down even further, until the process becomes so intolerable that the migrant caravans turn right around. Until we create a border processing system that’s even worse than whatever violence or unrest these people are running away from.”

His jaw clenched, teeth visibly gnashing, Ben fights his jacket off his shoulders and throws it on the nearest countertop. 

“You have _no idea…_ ”

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“No idea what the numbers really are. Every single day, how many people try to cross the border. Even the highest estimate isn’t complete. How utterly impossible it is to manage those kinds of numbers without becoming completely overrun.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Ben. ‘Overrun’? You sound like one of those neo-confederates complaining about the erosion of the American way of life.”

“For fuck’s sake. The border, Rey! The border would be completely overrun if there were nothing there to absorb and slow the thousands of people lined up there every day. I’m not talking only about the people – I’m talking about the drugs, disease, and instability that would flow in unchecked without guards in place. And that would happen at _any_ border. The fucking Canadian border too, if not for security checks. So don’t stand there and look at me in contempt. While you’re busy accusing people of being racists, I’m trying to think about the safety of this country and everyone in it.”

“Yeah. Doing a real bang-up job of it. Well, you know what? I don’t want your idea of safety if it comes at the price of kids in cages.”

Rey grabs her bag and storms outside. She nearly breaks her phone in half as she angrily stabs in an uber request. Ben doesn’t come outside to stop her before her ride arrives. 

News radio is playing in the car. 

“Would you mind changing the station?” Rey asks tightly, feeling like her hair might singe if she doesn’t calm down.

She hates the helpless anger she’s felt towards her own government ever since this President took office. Right now, it’s hardening into a dark, blazing fire in her chest. But below that, there’s an even deeper pit in her stomach. That pit is what Rey finds herself fighting against – what she has to take deep, focused breaths to avoid sinking into like suffocating quicksand.

More than anger, it’s a terrible, heartbreaking kind of betrayal. Ben had his allegiances before he ever met her. He was already embedded in his trajectory towards ever-higher positions of status. Rey doesn’t know how much of it he really chose for himself, but by the time she met him he had already hardened into a chameleon that could thrive in a bath of poison.

Rey almost wishes she could let go of her conviction that she knows the true side of him. That the man he is when they’re alone is the only real version of him – not just one face of many, exchanged when convenient. 

But she can’t let go, because it’s simply not possible. That the same man who saved her twice now; in whose presence and intimacy she feels an unequaled safety; who gently entreated “Maybe we could trust each other” on a balcony in Addis – it’s not possible that he’s also a man who can claim the “overall benefit” of a family separation policy.

She would have given up on him long ago, if it really only concerned politics when she fought with him. But Rey recognizes enough of her own feelings to know that in a twisted way, it’s _him_ she’s fighting for. The man he should be – and the one he keeps shutting away.

* * *

Ben: _It’s been days and you’re still not going to answer?_

Rey has a hard time finding anything to say to him, so long as reports continue that the President’s Cabinet remains behind him on the matter of immigration.

Ben, two weeks later: _Please, Rey. I really need to talk to someone._

_I need to talk to you. Will you meet me at the Mayflower tonight?_

Rey lets the texts go unanswered for a whole hour. After that, she finds she can’t hold out any more. Ben hardly ever says “please,” meaning he must be desperate indeed.

Rey: _Fine. Room number?_

Ben: _600\. Thank you._

It’s been ages since Rey last met him in a hotel, and it feels worlds different. There are no more easy meetings at bars or restaurants. If she won’t come all the way out to his house, then a hotel room is their only remaining option. 

Since becoming top-security personnel, whenever Ben’s not at work or at home, he has to be kept enclosed between four walls where his security detail can cover all doors and windows. When Rey gets to the correct floor, she has to be waved past two secret service men before she can enter the room.

She tries very hard not to dwell on what the secret service guys are probably thinking.

Inside, Ben is standing at the window, only the outline of him illuminated. His jacket and tie are gone already, his shirt mostly unbuttoned, a cigarette lodged between his lips. He turns at the sound of the door closing, and Rey takes a deep breath through the painful fist suddenly squeezing her heart. 

“Ben, you look awful.”

He gives a humorless laugh, neither refuting nor offended by her comment. He raises a hand to rub at the dark, tired circles around his eyes, then lifts it to his hair to muss the dark tangles even further. 

“Feel it, too.”

He watches her closely as she sets her bag down and peels off her sweater. Like the sight of her is the first real sustenance he’s had in days.

“I missed you. You didn’t talk to me for two weeks.”

His unguarded, searching words make Rey’s throat feel tighter. Make it hard to swallow for a moment. He’s not accusing, but she almost wishes he were. It’d be easier to make sense of her feelings that way. 

The last time she saw him, back at his house when the argument broke out about his NBC interview, she’d stormed out on him in disgust. 

As far as she knows, he hasn’t done anything to remedy all that outraged her about his shallow defense of an indefensible policy. But as she watches him for a long, silent moment in the dim room, it’s as if he hasn’t seen sunlight in weeks. 

Perhaps since the last time he saw her. It’s as if he’s scraped out and hollowed inside, and there simply isn’t enough of him to sustain Rey’s anger. 

“Put that damn thing out already.”

Ben huffs a laugh as he takes a final inhale of his sweet poison, before dropping it in the ashtray on the bedside table. 

Finally, she comes to him. He breathes out slowly as Rey reaches up to cradle his face in her hands. She smooths her thumbs beneath his eyes, then gently across his cheeks as he melts down towards her.

“You haven’t been sleeping?”

Ben shakes his head slightly, eyes closed. He’s so much taller than her, and yet she can feel him going entirely relaxed, practically boneless from one second to the next as her fingertips settle in his hair and her thumbs trace back and forth across his face. He’s leaning down into her touch as if he yearned for it more than any cigarette. 

“Late nights in the Situation Room. Haven’t gotten home in three days.”

“Oh, Ben.” 

_It’s not worth it,_ she wants to tell him. He looks as if he’s been drained to the bone – like it’s taking all his energy just to stay standing. _It’s not worth letting them bleed you dry._

But she doesn’t want to fight tonight. Rey can’t make herself raise her voice against him, not when he’s laying himself in her hands, paper-thin. 

“Will you get called back tonight?” is all she asks.

Ben shakes his head, pressing his cheek deeper into her palm. “Don’t think so.”

He opens his eyes, blinking at her slowly. The barest trace of hope shines there, like it’s all he can muster. 

“Will you stay?” he murmurs, lips brushing against her wrist. 

Rey knew the answer the second she saw him tonight. 

“Mmhm.”

Sighing in relief, only then do Ben’s hands slide to her waist. She lets him draw her close, settling her head against his chest as his arms enfold her. Rey closes her eyes, focusing on the hint of _him_ she can still smell beneath the lingering scent of smoke. 

His lips making the barest movements against her forehead, he circles a hand at the small of her back for strength. There’s so much he wants to say to her, so much to explain. So much he wants to confess in full honesty for once – to speak his mind and his heart in a way his tongue has almost forgotten. 

“I spend so much time parroting someone else’s policy lines, sometimes I lose myself completely.”

Rey circles her arms around his midsection, squeezing the slightest bit to as if to tell him: _You’re here. You’re found._

He sighs into her hair, his hand sliding to rub higher across her back. 

“It’s chipping away at me little by little. I’m on the front lines every day, trying to give explanations and defense, and it’s so difficult that my mind starts trying to convince me all these lines and lies are _mine._ Like that’s the only way I can do the job. But I don’t… I hope you can believe me when I say that’s not what I want to be.”

“I know that, Ben. I believe you.” _But do you really know it yourself?_

“I don’t know why I fought with you last time, Rey. I was still angry about the interview, at myself for not handling it better, and I was still operating in blind self-defense.”

He squeezes her closer, speaking with his lips right up against the side of her head as if keeping the words a secret, “There’s nothing defensible in the immigration policy. Nothing. But at some level – I guess it was easier to try to convince myself I believed in it too, rather than faking support for something I know, in my heart, is heinous. Rather than being a liar.”

Rey’s fingers knot in the back of his shirt. “I’d prefer if you were a liar. A hundred times over. Anything but agreeing with something like that.”

_But what I’d prefer most is if you refused to accept it at all. If you refused to be associated with it. Fight it or walk away, rather than deluding yourself like this._

“I want you to know, Rey, I am trying to change things. I went down to the border and to Mexico City again this past month, met with the Mexican President to try to improve conditions. How we can partner with their security forces to keep the crowds safe and contained. But I only… there’s only so much I have latitude to do. At the end of the day, I can’t depart from the President’s position without first convincing him the change should be made.”

Rey can’t picture it. She really can’t. Ben in the Oval Office, trying to bargain for an alternate policy that doesn’t deal in human cost. Not because she can’t see him doing it – but because it makes her heart break. For him and the fatigue she can feel when her arms are around him like this. 

_It’s not worth it,_ she wants to tell him again. But she stays quiet, because what she wants even more right now is to tug him into bed with her. She wants to curl up with him and hear him relax into sleep. She wants him to sleep through the night beside her, and wake him hours later with her kisses.

But the stubborn streak in her won’t let things lie quite so easily. Her voice is gentle, but she can’t help saying, “I guess it isn’t easy convincing him.”

Ben releases a laugh that’s half derision. “I’m starting to think it’s all but impossible. God, Rey… sometimes I swear it’s like talking to a brick wall, when he gets these completely impractical ideas he won’t be talked out of.”

Rey rubs her hand across the wide expanse of his back. She’s careful with her words, doing her best to keep her tone neutral. “Did you think things would be different, when you took the job? Did you think he would listen to advisors?”

He sighs – over her head now, as opposed to pressing everything into her hair. “I don’t know. There’ve been plenty of Foreign Policy Advisors credited with changing a President’s mind, and that’s an opportunity difficult to turn down.”

Rey swallows around the feeling that they’re dancing closer to the danger point – the point that stabbed through Rey’s heart when she learned of his appointment. She pulls back from him so her words won’t be lost in his shoulder.

“But did you... Ben, did you want to change his mind, when you took it? Because what I couldn’t bear – what I still can’t bear to think about too much – is if you took the position for the status, accepting what you would have to represent. If you took it with no intention to fight for something better.”

“Rey,” he whispers, sounding pained. “It’s not… it’s not that simple.”

“Why not? When we fought in the past, you’d say so often that you had no influence over whatever it was we argued about. You can’t use that excuse anymore. The President speaks from your mouth now. Unless you raise your voice and change the words, then you’re enabling and promoting all his hateful-”

“ _Please,_ Rey.”

His voice comes out so strangled and desperate, it stops Rey in her tracks. In the dim light, she can see his eyes shining. Not quite with tears, but with a profound injury into which her words ground salt.

“I need to know that you, at least you, see me for more than that.”

Rey bites her tongue. 

Her immediate thought is that he should recognize the egotism of what he’s asking. He should see that Rey was actually talking about something much bigger than only his own self-image or moral conscience. That it’s not quite compelling for him to be asking her to assuage his distress, and something as small as her understanding is all he needs in order to go on; when so much that is so much bigger than either of them rests on his shoulders. 

Rey relaxes her jaw, making her racing thoughts calm enough to take in the anguish in his face. If her perspective of him is how he judges himself, then there’s still hope for Rey to get through to him, sooner or later. She can’t discount the way he is _finally_ baring himself to her – admitting his conflict and his doubt. He’s not ready yet to do what Rey thinks needs to be done, but Rey wants to believe he’s getting closer. 

That, and Rey simply doesn’t have the strength to kick him when he’s down. When he’s looking at her like she holds the power to crush his very life in her fist; The way she wishes he would realize countless people across the entire country look to him every day.

She reaches up to touch his cheek again. 

“I said I believe you. Believe in you. I meant it.”

Ben closes his eyes, visibly sinking into her words. Savoring them like they’re his only shelter on a cold, stormy night. Rey twines the fingers of her other hand between his. 

“Come on. I just want you to get some damn rest.”

Rey unfastens the remaining buttons of Ben’s shirt and unzips his pants. While he steps out of his clothes, Rey peels her own off until she’s down to just her underwear. Taking his hand again, she pulls him down into the bed with her. Stretching out beneath the covers, Ben wraps himself around her. 

Rey relaxes into the familiar feel of him nuzzling the back of her neck. It takes all of a minute for Ben to go still behind her, his breathing evening out and his arms around her going limp. 

Rey lies there for a while, not bothering to deny that this is the single place she feels most comfortable, most safe. Whether it’s in Ben’s bedroom or an anonymous hotel room, his arms fit her perfectly. 

She wonders if she should be ashamed of herself. If she should have refused him – refused them both – this safe haven where they let the wrongdoings of their own and of society slip away. Where Rey still chooses Ben’s intimacy over her principles.

Ben makes a soft sound like distress in his sleep, his arms unconsciously pulling her closer. For now, Rey decides everyone deserves moments of solace. She covers one of his hands with hers and closes her eyes. 

Ben’s phone wakes them both shortly after 6 AM. Ben blindly reaches to the nightstand to silence it. In bed, he turns back to Rey who’s still mostly asleep beside him. He kisses her a few times mournfully before getting up and quietly getting ready to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems like the timing of the impeachment discussion at the beginning couldn't be more topical, even though I wrote this chapter weeks ago. What really blew my mind though was when I finished a chapter last week directly related to the Special Counsel's investigation, just before Mueller testified. In many ways, writing this story is helping pull me through all the current political mire. The best part of all though, hands down, is reading all of your reactions and thoughts. <3 Thanks for sticking with me!
> 
> [Say hi on tumblr!](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/)


	6. Inside Your Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He holds her through all the wild things released inside her, her body in shock from it all as Ben fills every last corner of her with himself.
> 
> “I wish I belonged here,” Ben just barely whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys might have noticed I did a thing with the chapter titles! I've been listening to The 1975 a lot while writing since their vibes continue to underlie this story in my head, and I realized there's a treasure trove of their song titles to match to each chapter. I think I'm also going to start linking a song at the end of some upcoming chapters, since one or two chapters are explicitly linked to a song in my mind for the mood or to capture a distinct moment for a character.
> 
> Also... fair warning I did THAT thing in this chapter where someone namedrops the title... Forgive my shameless desire to be meta.
> 
> [Listen to the title song!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

  


At work, Rey can’t stop seeing Ben’s weary, pleading face in her mind. She texts him before lunch and before she can think better of it.

Rey: _You know, that bed at the Mayflower was crazy comfortable. I don’t think I’d mind a second night._

Ben: _I can be there by 9 tonight. Same room?_

Rey: _Sounds good. I’ll bring the Indian this time?_

Ben: _I’ll order champagne._

Rey: _Haven’t you ever heard of a ‘quiet night in’?_

Ben: _……No._

Ben: _Last night was too quiet. Let’s make up for it._

Rey already has him laughing by 10 that night, when she ‘accidentally’ smears bright tikka sauce across his white shirt. 

“Oh no,” she says, stuffing a hunk of naan into her mouth and proceeding to talk around it, “Looks like your shirt has to come off. What a tragedy.”

She’s trying not to be obvious about it, but she’s basking in his laugh, in his smile. In the blessed difference from the night before, when he seemed like he could barely stay standing.

“What would really be a tragedy…” Ben says, eyes glinting in levity as his hand draws slowly closer to Rey’s dish of tikka masala. “Is if any of this sauce just happened to get on that pretty dress of yours.”

Rey swipes her dish off the bed and holds it safely out of reach. “No way in hell. Now I told you to strip already, before that stain sets.”

“Oh, are you going to scrub it clean for me?”

Rey barks a laugh. “You wish. But at least put it in some water to make it easier for your fancy dry cleaner.”

Smiling to himself, Ben eyes the containers of their usual Indian delivery order as he undoes the buttons of his shirt.

“God, remember the food in Addis? It was-”

“Spectacular.”

“-awful.”

Rey holds up a menacing finger, placing her dish down on the table next to the window as if she needs both hands free to properly tell him off. 

“You _know_ my feelings on Ethiopian food.”

Ben rolls his eyes with no small amount of affection. “Your incorrect feelings.”

“You’re just bitter because you were deprived of Ethiopian deliciousness for so much of your sad, sad life.”

“More like I had a healthy digestive system for most of my fortunate life.”

“Sounds like it’s a good thing you have a good dry cleaner, Mr. Weak-of-Stomach.”

“You’re about to need your own dry cleaner, and it better be a good one.”

His ruined shirt finally disposed of, Ben launches himself over the bed. Rey lets out a dramatic noise of protest as Ben catches her around the waist and reaches his hand out towards the dish of bright red tikka sauce. 

“No!” Rey shrieks, laughing. She tries to wrestle her way free, but Ben’s arm keeps her firmly locked against him. She resorts to an alternate strategy – kicking up from the ground and sending both her and Ben sprawling sideways onto the bed. 

They both wrestle for a moment in the bed sheets, before the sound of dishes clattering to the floor and food splattering makes them both freeze in place, eyes locked. 

“Our food,” Rey gasps.

“At least we still have the champagne.”

“But it’s going to be such a mess…”

“I’ll leave a generous cleaning tip.”

Rey rolls her eyes, huffing a laugh despite herself. She mimics his deep voice, “ _I’ll leave a generous cleaning tip._ ”

“Look, we have more important things to attend to.”

“Mm, do we?”

Ben shifts his entire weight on top of Rey, pushing her flat on her back beneath him and definitively claiming victory in their interrupted wrestling match. One of his hands clambers down to find her thigh and pull it up against his hip. 

“We most certainly do,” he breathes against her throat, his tongue tasting her pulse point where it’s starting to race. 

Rey drags her hands down Ben’s bare back, making a hazy sound of content from deep in her chest.

Kissing slowly down her throat, Ben murmurs, “You should’ve let me put stains all over this dress, just so I could get you out of it sooner.”

His free hand grips a fistful of the offending fabric just to accent his point. Rey wriggles beneath him until his lips are dislodged from her skin and he has to look up to her eyes. When she gets his attention, she gives her lower lip a coy, calculated bite.

“I’d be out of it soon for you anyway.”

Ben makes a soft noise of gratification, but his fingers don’t relax in the fabric of her dress.

“Not soon enough.”

Rey can tell from the intensity in his eyes that he’s only a second away from ripping the dress to shreds. It never fails to make Rey’s breath catch and every inch of her flush hot – the way he’s always so _hungry_ for her. 

But before he gives in to the fury, Rey plants both her hands on his shoulders and pushes him back just slightly. 

“Stand up for a second. There’s a better way.”

“Rey,” he nearly growls.

“Just for a second. Trust me.”

It seems to take him almost a herculean effort, but he lifts himself up from her and finds his footing again beside the foot of the bed. 

“Take care of the rest of your clothes,” Rey commands easily as she sits up.

Ben does as she says, not disliking the new shade of heat that bubbles in his chest at her self-assured tone. It nearly makes him weak, to hear that voice that’s always standing her ground in arguments with him, that voice that near makes him crazy – to hear it dominating him in this way. 

This kind of dominance he would gladly cede to her.

When he completes the command, he’s left standing there with his cock flushed and heavy against his stomach, his eyes burning as they bore into her where she still sits curled on the bed. 

Staring openly at his groin, Rey swipes her tongue across her bottom lip. She still can’t fathom how he makes all that fit inside her.

“Very good boy. Now, your reward.”

She uncurls herself, then crawls slowly to him across the bed. Ben groans at the sight, fists clenching at his sides to stop himself from pouncing on her right then and there. 

Rey stands slowly from the bed. She sweeps her hair in front of one shoulder as she turns her back to Ben. She leans forward against the bed ever so slightly, giving him the clear offering of the long zipper down the back of her dress, ending just where her hips and the swell of her ass tilt back towards him.

Ben takes a slow, deep breath as he steps close. He lets his fingers trail up her sides, savoring the way she shudders, before gripping the zipper at her nape. He dips his head so his lips can find the secret spot behind her ear that makes her go entirely weak. His hand is already there at her hip to support her when he finds it – when Rey gasps and melts for him completely. 

Her breathing still high and trembling, Ben pulls back only enough so he can watch the long zipper opening down her back, revealing inch after inch of creamy skin. Once the zipper hits the bottom, Ben’s hands come up to her shoulders to slide the dress down her arms until it slips from her entirely. 

His hands hurry to make fast work of her bra and let that fall too. His lips return to her neck, and now she’s pushing back against the solid height of him behind her until she feels the wet head of him brushing her lower back. 

His wide hands pull her back tighter against himself, while his lips work that spot behind her ear that turns Rey to a trembling mess. One of his arms comes around her to enclose one of her breasts in his massive hand, while his other hand pushes down into her underwear. She moans out his name, taking just as much pleasure now in begging as she did earlier in commanding, as his hand cups her cunt. 

“Am I allowed now?” he breathes against her ear, feeling every inch of her quivering against him as he slides his fingertips through her folds. His other hand squeezes at her breast as he feels her growing wet against his fingers. “Am I allowed to take what’s mine?”

Rey pushes her hips forward into his fingers, at the same time the rest of her seeks to press back further into the heat of his chest.

“Yes. Yes, Ben. Take what’s yours.”

Rey’s underwear hit the ground in seconds. Ben spins her to face him and pushes her back onto the bed all in one motion. Rey scrambles to open her legs wide enough to fit all of him between. Her legs lock around him, her head falling back with a gasp as he sinks inside. 

Two weeks. It’s been over two weeks and it seems like an unbearable eternity. How did she go without this? God, how did she bear being so _empty_? 

Rey’s arms extend up the bed above her, hands reaching for something to grab onto as he moves hard and fast within her – the time without her seemingly catching up to him all in one desperate rush. 

“Ben, Ben, Ben!” Rey starts gasping out, when he starts hammering the place inside her that makes her see stars.

He releases a moan that sounds like her name, sliding his hands down her body to grip and lift her hips so he can push even deeper inside. He slams in again and Rey cries out, swearing she’s about to break in half and never wanting anything more in her life. 

Ben makes a strangled noise as Rey’s inner muscles start squeezing around him – a sure sign that she’s getting close. He reaches between them to find her clit and the mewling sound she makes when he finds it hits him with his peak like a blow to the head. Rey’s hips start writhing, rolling herself down against him as she comes in a shuddering gasp. 

She’s still chanting _Ben_ , her voice sinking to a supplicating whisper now. And as he slowly pulls out from her, he wants to pray her name. 

Rey opens her arms, smiling up at him in the image of contentment. The only lucid thought Ben’s pleasure-addled brain can muster is that he’s never done a thing in his life to deserve that smile – that smile worth more than the entire world. Even so, he does one more thing he’ll have to atone for some day. 

He sinks down into her embrace.

  


* * *

  


“I feel like every minute with you is stolen,” Ben whispers, after the lights are off and he no longer has to see Rey’s face as his lips brush against her hair. “Stolen until I have to do something that will make you shut me out again.”

Rey considers for a moment, trying to decide the best way to express to him how wrong he is. It’s not some _thing_ that pushes her away sometimes – It’s the part of him that clings to warped ideas of ethics and duty that aren’t his own. 

“They’re choices, Ben. Every day you make choices to support and recommend certain policies, and sometimes those aren’t the ones your heart is telling you are right. But you support them anyway. Because that’s easier or because you don’t think you’re strong enough to change the river’s flow – I don’t know. Either way, those reasons are bullshit. You _can_ choose differently.”

Ben’s quiet for a long while. Thinking about her words. Feeling the shape of her against him. Wishing for a great many things that still lie beyond his reach. 

“No, I made this bed. I chose it. Now I have to sleep in it.”

  


* * *

  


“I love…”

He’s deep, deep inside her again – just rocking instead of drawing out at all. Rey is breathing slowly, half dazed, her body working around him and ears straining towards his words. To make sense of his aborted speech.

“I’d love it if we made it,” he manages to breathe. He rocks himself inside still deeper, and rides the wave of spine-tingling pleasure all the way to his toes. Beneath him, Rey makes a sound like she might dissolve apart. Like nothing has ever made her feel so good.

Just barely, Ben manages to go on, “If… with all the shit happening in the world today, if someone like me and someone like you could…”

“Could what?” Rey breathes, making every effort to listen past the roaring in her ears. Past the surge filling every inch of her, seeping out through her very skin. 

“… Make it.”

Ben dips his head to kiss her. Gripping him tight, Rey whimpers as he cants his hips impossibly _deeper_. She feels him hook a hand beneath her knee and gently ease her further open. Rey can’t breathe at the overwhelming stretch, at the new space he suddenly reaches inside her that feels taboo, and Ben whispers soothing endearments when he sees the tears prickling her eyes. 

Her fingers tighten against his back, holding him there so he won’t misunderstand. 

He shudders her name, ghosting kisses all across her face as his cock slowly works her entire body. He takes his cherished time, working himself through an inner layer of her even Rey herself has never confronted. He holds her through all the wild things released inside her, her body in shock from it all as Ben fills every last corner of her with himself.

“I wish I belonged here,” Ben just barely whispers. 

The trembling starts in Rey’s toes first. By the time it overtakes her entire body, she’s whimpering not only from the cresting, crushing sensations, but for the fact that this isn’t permanent – him infusing her existence with his own. That this place within her Ben just broke into and released perfection from will have to continue existing without him after this, when it was so _clearly_ made for the shape of him... 

Rey cries for breath, her cunt clinging desperately to every inch of him as she comes. As she feels him pulse hot and claim parts of her she never knew existed. 

_You do belong here_ , the words yearn for release. _This is your home._

They are cried from her very soul, when Ben slowly begins withdrawing from her body and everything inside her scrambles to rearrange and comfort itself in his absence. He kisses her in a kind of gentle consolation when the head of his cock slides out from her completely.

Still shaking in his arms, still letting out soft whimpers as Ben, winded and stunned, kisses down her chest and takes her nipple in slow, sucking circles, she thinks he doesn’t know the half of it.

  


* * *

  


Without needing to say it, they both know Rey won’t spend a third night with him. So they’re both awake, filling the late-night quiet with soft whispers. Rey is curled against him under the sheets, one hand ghosting idly along his chest. 

Her fingers skim lower, catching at the raised circle of scar tissue a few inches above his left hip. It’s not the first time she’s noticed it.

“What’s this scar? You’ve never told me.”

“You never asked.” Ben shifts for a moment, like he can’t get comfortable. “Guess.”

Rey makes an exaggerated face of thoughtful effort. “An intense rugby game at Harvard? Or whatever it is you fancy kids played there?”

“Not quite.”

Ben shifts again, finally stilling with an arm settled back beneath his head. He stares up at the ceiling for such a long time, Rey thinks he might have decided against sharing after all. She’s just finding another cozy place for her head against his chest when he starts to speak. 

“I never told you my third DOS tour was to Sudan. Right after China.”

Though Ben can’t see it, Rey’s face shifts in surprise. She wouldn’t have expected that he made such a stop on his fast-track way to the top. She can’t picture the first version of him she ever met – across the interrogation table – packing off for war-torn Africa. 

“About six months in, Human Rights Watch sent a group of observers to Khartoum. They planned to travel into Darfur, to monitor the status of human rights crimes and investigate whether chemical weapons had really been used against the local population. They needed a security escort, and we were really their only option. Three of the Marines in our security force at the Embassy were willing to transport the group, but they needed one Foreign Service Officer to accompany for accountability. 

“I hadn’t had much chance to leave the compound, at that point. Any field excursions were high security and a logistical nightmare, so I thought it would be a good chance to finally get out and see the country outside the American bubble on the compound. I volunteered.” 

His free arm loops loosely around her as he speaks, fingertips skimming light circles against her shoulder as he circles through words in his head. 

“We drove out with a team of three Marines and the five observers to Al-Fashir in northern Darfur. Once we got there, the Human Rights Watch staff started talking to people immediately. They had a few contacts, but mostly they were trying to draw out as many local stories and experiences as they could. I hung back near the vehicle with security. We’d been careful not to have any American branding visible, but the Marines were armed and we attracted attention.”

Ben pauses. He shifts beneath Rey and sighs, giving himself a moment of mental space. Rey waits, keyed into him completely.

“Security already didn’t like it when the observer team started attracting a crowd. They were asking people to come forward about loss and atrocities they’d experienced at the hands of militia soldiers, and there were plenty of people ready to speak. Men, women, children… It was like the entire town started to gather. Even – even families.”

Ben’s voice trails off for a moment. Rey has no idea what’s coming, but something makes her start running her hand along Ben’s side on instinct. 

When he resumes speaking, his voice is strained and dim. 

“I was the one to see him first. I don’t know how. There was no time to tell the security team – no time to do anything right. In the middle of the crowd, a man put down this parcel wrapped in tape and string before he started running, shoving people out of his way. Clearly home made. It was a dead ringer for the amateur explosives we were taught to spot the very first week of Officer training.” He swallows audibly, voice struggling. “The kind that are embedded with glass and shrapnel, for maximum bloodshed.”

Another deep breath as he wills his voice to steady. He can’t quite manage it completely. Not when he’s really putting this to words for the first time in his life. 

“I realized what was about to happen. And all I saw was this girl. Four, five years old at most. Standing maybe three feet in front of me – between me and the bomb. Without thinking at all, I grabbed the girl and tried to shield her. The shrapnel that went into my back and came out here a day later probably would have killed her. 

“Afterwards, I remember the girl’s mother pulling her from my arms. My ears were ringing so fucking loud and I could barely see… but I saw enough. The girl wailing. The mother bleeding, looking at me with the most awful fear in her eyes. With hatred. Like we were the ones who’d dropped the bomb.

“We might as well have been. If we hadn’t come, the bomb would never have been set.”

Rey clutches her arms around Ben, trying to steady herself. Trying to steady him. Her head is reeling. 

“Ben, you can’t… you can’t think like that. It was hardly your fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if those observer trips never happen, then crimes like that just continue with even more impunity.”

Ben’s voice is bleak. “For months, I couldn’t stop thinking about those Vietnamese villagers during the war. Arms amputated by the Viet Cong because they’d been immunized by Americans. We put all those people in danger, when we came in as outsiders.”

“It’s _not_ the same. How could you even suggest – ”

“I’m not sure it’s much different, Rey. And it’s why I struggle to believe in aid work anymore.”

Rey makes a concerted effort to temper a moment of frustration. She’s all too aware of the lingering sensitivity in Ben’s body beneath her. She strives to keep her voice even.

“But you’ve advocated for interventionist policies.”

“It’s honest. We don’t pretend to be there to fix everyone’s problems. If we involve ourselves, militarily or otherwise, it’s because we’re trying to enable a world order of greater security.”

Rey is halfway to throwing Syria in his face, to demanding why his high-handed interventionist policies are so conveniently selective when it comes to the matter of regime change. But something stops her. 

She knows full well by now that she and Ben will never agree on matters like this. They’ve come this far without that fact completely destroying whatever this is between them. 

But there’s a difference, now. For the first time, Rey realizes the motivation behind his words is something she relates to. Something she understands entirely. 

Rey says nothing for a long time, until she finally moves to look up at him. Something shifts in her eyes, and it makes Ben give a soft, hollow laugh.

“Don’t pretend to look at me like your opinion of me’s suddenly changed. I didn’t jump in front of that girl in a bout of heroism, or because I suddenly believed in the human rights cause. It was just instinct, really. I can’t say I’d do it over again.”

Rey remains silent for a long moment more. Long enough that the self-deprecating edge fades from Ben’s eyes. 

Clearly lacking any further energy or will to argue, Ben slides his arms all the way around Rey and lets his head dip down into the curve of her shoulder in a kind of capitulation.

Rey lifts a hand to stroke his hair. When she finally speaks to him, it’s in a gentle whisper that matches none of the horror he just confessed. 

“You try so hard to deceive yourself. You give everything, kill everything inside yourself, to belong in the den of wolves.”

She kisses his hair, her lips landing against his ear. The ears that still stick out, no matter how much he tries to cover them.

“But you’ll never deceive me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Deep dive into this chapter atmosphere: Fallingforyou](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3JJxS0gNkE)
> 
> This was one of my favorite chapters to write. They deserved these moments together, just like Rey deserves to get to know Ben more deeply. The (Real) Ben. 
> 
> So many of you left truly heartfelt, thoughtful, beautiful comments on the last chapter and I can't express enough how much each and every one mean to me. <3 I've become completely engrossed in writing this story and it's been quite a personally consuming journey so far. Sharing it with you all just elevates it even more and lets me see certain aspects in brand new ways. So thank you SO much for all your comments and please keep on!
> 
> [Say hi on tumblr!](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/)


	7. She Way Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You could have fucking warned me."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short, and I apologize for it... Though I think it will make sense why I wanted to end the last chapter where it did, but then also end this one here. To make it up to all you wonderful readers, I promise to post again within the next two days. And you might have noticed I upped the chapter count, so I haven’t cheated you guys of a proper chapter!
> 
> Listen to [Love It If We Made It!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

The following week, Rey comes into work to discover a crack down the middle of her life. Two of her teammates are standing in her boss’s doorway. 

One is crying.

When Rey approaches, their boss levels Rey with a somber look.

“The aid funding cuts finally got through Congress. The DRC and Mauritania grants have been pulled.”

Rey’s legs go weak. Everything spinning around her, she reaches out with a shaking hand to grip the doorway for support. 

Rey was the one who wrote the winning proposal for the DRC grant. After overseeing setup, the program had rotated to Sophie for administration; who now stands beside Rey sniffling at the shock of her salary evaporating beneath her very feet. 

Mauritania is in Rey’s portfolio. But as it’s blessedly one of three programs she works on, Rey’s job is safe for now. Although that isn’t the case for any of the staff in the entire Mauritania office. The colleagues Rey has worked with for the better part of two years. The friends Rey will have to call today to tell them the funding’s been taken back. 

She accomplishes nothing that day, but little by little the shock boils over into rage. 

Rey: _I need to see you. Tonight._

Ben: _You pick the place._

Rey’s fingers shake around her phone. The last time she saw him was last week’s hotel room, where for those minutes in the dark, early-morning hours, he had seemed a different man entirely. 

Rey: _No dinner. No hotel. Place doesn’t matter._

Ben: _…Hamilton?_

Rey smirks with something near malice. The bar is very public, and frequented by government staffers from all sectors. Perfect. 

That evening, Ben’s secret service wave her through to a room secluded towards the back, where only a few people are seated along the bar. It won’t make a difference – Rey plans to make a scene. 

Ben spins towards her on his seat when he sees her coming. From the tone of her texts, he looks sufficiently wary. 

Rey clenches her jaw as she approaches. 

“You could have fucking warned me.”

Ben’s mouth hardens into a flat line. He stands, saying nothing even as his shoulders straighten in a defensive instinct. 

Rey glares up at him, contempt radiating from her. 

“You could have warned me half my colleagues were about to lose their jobs. That I would have to pull the plug on our field office operations when grants get retracted.” 

Something shifts behind the defensive edge of Ben’s features. Rey grows only more furious that he doesn’t look as surprised as he should. 

“You just never had the thought?” Rey seethes, shoulders trembling. “You’re the fucking foreign policy expert. It doesn’t matter if it was your idea or his. You would have been first to know that the President’s been foaming at the mouth to gut USAID, and you did shit about it. What, you’re gonna advise him to build his fucking border wall with my ex-colleagues’ salaries?”

Ben remains silent. His expression isn’t calm by any means, but it’s obscuring any genuine reaction to her barbs. Rey wants to sink her very fingernails in. 

“You _knew_ this was happening. But apparently you thought it was fine to let my entire career, my entire _sector_ get fucked over, while you kept fucking me yourself.”

“Rey,” he bites. “What the hell was I supposed to do? There are codes of ethics; I’ve got confidential orders down my fucking throat.”

“What were you supposed to do? Apparently anything but have a shred of integrity. Keep living in your self-centered, egotistical world where whatever you do is right so long as the job demands it.” 

Rey huffs out a violent sigh, her glare cutting him. 

“Grow a fucking backbone. That or a set of balls.”

Rey spins to leave, so angry she’s seeing red. She makes it three steps before Ben shakes himself to life and lurches forward. His hand catches her arm. Rey reels, tugging away from him immediately, but he holds on. When Rey unwillingly turns towards him, his eyes have come alive.

“ _I’m self-centered?_ You come in here and curse at me as if this is personal. As if me just trying to keep my job has anything to do with us. The foreign aid funding cut was started long before I joined the cabinet. I had nothing to do with…”

With a growl of frustration, Rey rips her arm free. 

“You’re so fucking deluded! You stand there and tell me your defense is that your job means more to you than anything – more than me, more than your own decency, more than thinking about something other than your own personal benefit for a goddamn second.”

Ben’s face darkens closer and closer to real fury. 

“This job is everything I’ve worked towards. Of course it means more than someone who stands here and degrades me for having some ambition.”

“That’s what you call it? Ambition?” 

Rey shakes her head hard enough to make her neck ache, revulsion roiling in her stomach. Worse than her sick disappointment in him is her burning shame in herself. 

“Because I call it being complicit and spineless.”

Rey’s already turning away and marching towards the door, but Ben’s anger is so raw it’s beyond all hope of containment. 

“Someone has to make the hard decisions. You should just be grateful it doesn’t have to be you, so you can keep living in your philanthropy fantasy world.”

Rey doesn’t look back, knowing all that will come out of her mouth are screams and curses if she unlocks her jaw or turns back to look at him for even a second. She storms outside and walks four blocks without any awareness of where she’s going. 

Only at the fifth block does Rey realize she’s not breathing but sobbing.

* * *

Rey is almost numb when her own funding cut letter arrives the following week. 

Almost.

Rey: _I’m out of my philanthropy fantasy world now. Guess I should be grateful._

She regrets the message immediately after she sends it. She doesn’t want Ben to know she remembers his words exactly. Doesn’t want him to know how much she has thought about every damn one. 

She doesn’t want to admit that the pain she’s been steeped in since the last time she saw him already cuts as deep as wounds go.

Ben: _Rey, come see me tonight. Please._

Rey buries her phone at the bottom of her bag, beneath the contents of her desk drawers as she empties them.

Ben: _I’m so sorry._

Ben: _For everything._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY T___T I know none of you are happy but I promise you won't have to wait long for more. Let me know what you thought in the meantime??
> 
> [Say hi or join me crying about this fic](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) on tumblr D'':


	8. Surrounded by Heads and Bodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben sees her all the time. All the fucking time. Her face is on TV. Her voice is on the radio. 
> 
> He would hate the sight of her, if he didn’t need it so much.
> 
> He might find some shred of comfort in the near-constant presence of her voice; if it weren’t for the self-loathing that cages him in when he remembers what he said to her. What he did. 
> 
> In the Oval Office, Ben knows he shouldn’t feel so empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all are the best - Thank you for not being angry with me about the last chapter! I'm glad a lot of you said you kinda enjoy the angst because I'm afraid we're going to be reveling in it for a while still... 
> 
> This weekend I've been working on a chapter towards the end that's been very difficult from a technical/legal standpoint, so I'm going to respond to comments after posting this! I've read all of them already though and can't emphasize enough how much life it gives me to see all the heart and thought you guys have invested in this story. So much love for each and every one of you <333 
> 
> Disclaimer that Rey has her take-no-prisoners outspoken moments in this chapter. But just as with Ben, they're her opinions and it's not my intention to be /preachy. 
> 
> Here's the good kind of preachy though in the [title song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

She’s not sure how it happened, but suddenly Rey is standing on the hastily constructed plywood speaker’s platform. There’s a microphone in her hand. There are news cameras pointed at her.

And she’s talking. Words rushing out like they’ve been prisoners for years. 

“This is our city. These are our streets. We stand with our immigrant neighbors. The neighbors who are our friends and family, who every day face the threats of white supremacist violence and arbitrary deportation. Who make this country great no matter how frequently the current administration tries to tell us otherwise.”

A sea of people holding picket signs and banners raise their fists, cheering approval.

“ICE officers were ordered to raid this neighborhood tonight, but instead they found a veritable army of us, here to protect our friends and give witness to their injustice.”

Jeers break out along the edges of the crowd – aimed towards the police sentries monitoring the protest from its perimeter. 

“Our President thinks this is his city. His country to do whatever he likes with.” The boos grow in cacophony along with Rey’s amplified voice. “But he’s in for a rude awakening if he thinks he can turn us against each other. If he thinks he won’t face a reckoning for all the families he has separated and lives he has destroyed. His legacy will be nothing but that of an ignorant bigot; while we’ll still be here, standing tall. In our solidarity, we will outlive any and all injustice.”

Amidst a surge of cheering, Rey holds out the microphone to the next person approaching the platform. 

Back on the ground, standing pressed together with her friends and strangers alike, Rey catches her breath amidst the rush. 

It’s the fifth protest she’s been to since losing her job a month ago. It’s the fifth moment since then that she has felt wholly herself - filled with something other than aimless, burning frustration. 

It’s been so long since the protests in Tibet during her PeaceCorps years; she almost forgot this rush of euphoric purpose and might.

It’s the fifth time she’s felt truly alive.

* * *

“Mr. President. Washington Post.”

The reporter rises from the second row of the packed pressroom.

“Mr. President – Will you comment on the mass demonstration that prevented ICE’s planned deportation of some hundred households? And do you have a response to the televised speech by Rey Johnson?”

Ben is standing at the edge of the room, just out of view of cameras and reporters alike. He’d come to hear the inevitable questions about the Iran nuclear deal, then to brief the President on responses for next time the questions arose. 

But when he hears her name, it strikes him through to the soles of his feet. He can’t breathe. 

The man at the podium shrugs dismissively, waving a hand haphazardly in the air. 

“I’ve got bigger things to worry about than a bunch of hippies and delinquents holding some block party. They’re just lucky I didn’t decide to send full military in there to remove them. And no, I’ve got no comment about the speech – if you could even call it that. Beats me why it was broadcast in the first place.”

“Mr. President, in a later interview with CNN, Ms. Johnson explained she worked in the development sector until just last month, when cuts to foreign aid closed her non-profit organization.”

“Well, lucky for her she can go out and get a real job now. She’s not quite a charmer but I’ve made enough new jobs this sector, there should be plenty for even her.”

Ben’s stomach heaves. He hears none of the rest of the news conference – blood and rage and shattering shame roaring in his ears. He can’t tell if his hands balled into fists to try to stop the trembling, or if he’s squeezing them into fists so hard he started the trembling himself. 

_You should just be grateful … living in your philanthropy fantasy world._

Ben struggles to breathe. Until the press conference ends and the President, oblivious, claps him on the shoulder as he walks past, expecting Ben to fall into step with him.

A hundred things to say burn through Ben’s mind. At the front of them all:

_How dare you._

Instead, Ben takes a trembling breath and starts in on Iran. 

He dives into detail that’s perhaps overkill. Detail he knows full well the man beside him won’t absorb at all. But Ben keeps talking and talking – A desperate, futile bid to drown out the despairing, disgraced question in his heart. 

_How could I?_

* * *

The day after her interview and the President’s press conference airs, Rey gets the first text from Ben in over a month.

Ben: _I bet you’re very proud._

She can’t help but smirk, even as she deletes the message. 

* * *

Despite being jobless while employment prospects in her sector shrink day by day, Rey finds herself surprisingly busy. The interview requests and editorial offers keep coming. Even two weeks later, she’s still flitting around DC for speaking engagements and podcast recordings. She doubts it’s going to last. How many interesting things can she keep coming up with to say? 

But so long as her anger at _everything_ keeps simmering in her belly, it continues feeling second-nature to address a crowd or find yet another way to phrase her support of domestic policy reform and US multilateral engagement abroad.

It happens once or twice. Perhaps more. When she’s in the middle of giving a response and has to pause right there between words when the thought strikes her. 

_I sound like Ben._

Not in substance, of course, but in every bit of style. 

She hates it. 

Hates even more how it comforts her. 

Occasionally, she wonders if he’s out there watching or listening to her still. Of course he would have seen the press conference where the President mentioned her name and unknowingly rocketed her to national attention. He was probably there. 

But what of the radio interviews and talk show appearances? Does he ever look up what she’s been doing, since she stormed out of his life?

She tells herself that when she thinks of him, it’s because she’s hoping her words might still reach him. Perhaps there’s a chance they might still convince him. 

Only in her low moments alone, after her friends have gone home and the phone goes silent, does Rey consider another reason. 

She yearns to hear his voice. Right against her ear, right against her skin. 

She wonders if that same yearning moves Ben’s fingers towards her interview recordings.

Recordings where she extols ideals anathema to everything he professes to represent.

Recordings that make plainly clear why Rey can no longer abide his situation the same way he abides a corrupt administration.

* * *

“Corruption” flashes on headlines more frequently each day. The weeks pass, and the Special Counsel promises an approaching end to the investigation and the release of his findings.

Even without conclusive findings, the clamoring for impeachment grows louder each day.

Rey continues taking interviews, and does her best to add to the noise. 

Ben sees her all the time. All the fucking time.

Her face is on TV. Her voice is on the radio. The video of her from the ICE protest will play _again_ on his phone before he even realizes his fingers called it up.

He would hate the sight of her, if he didn’t need it so much.

He might find some shred of comfort in the near-constant presence of her voice; if it weren’t for the self-loathing that cages him in when he remembers what he said to her. What he did. 

In the Oval Office for the latest briefing on Iran’s uranium enrichment levels, Ben knows he shouldn’t feel so empty. Sometimes a dull simmer of frustration is the only thing alive in him. These are the same kind of people he’s been surrounded by his whole life, only to the extreme. Yet he feels utterly alone; entirely distant. 

He feels alienated from all of it – their language, their bravado, their insular, entrenched agenda – and sometimes he isn’t above wishing he could simply wipe away whatever happened within him to repel him from what he always thought would be the rewards of achieving such a coveted position. 

He knows these people aren’t his friends. Even deeper, he knows the circle of dry, certain land he stands on continues to shrink day by day.

He knows that whenever he opens his mouth, it’s either to lie or to disgrace himself. He continues doing the former because he can’t yet muster the strength for the latter.

He knows what Rey would say: He’s already disgracing himself everyday.

Ben hasn’t slept properly in two weeks. He’s seen no one outside of the Cabinet for the last one. Seeking fortitude midway through the briefing, his parched spirit imagines the small baggie of powder he knows is buried down in a lead-lined pocket of his bag. 

He should have known right away – when one of his new colleagues took him aside with a leer in a private corner, his third day on the job. 

He should have known to get out while he could.

* * *

Rey lowers her wine glass as she and her three friends fall silent. Someone turns up the TV in the living room. “Special Prosecutor Announces Initial Findings” headlines the screen.

“As our investigation nears its end, we have identified several holes in our evidence which we believe will prove instrumental to our ultimate findings. We have found reason to believe that several meetings held between the President’s cabinet, staff of both the CIA and State Department, and potential foreign contacts in the first weeks after the President took office have been purposely removed from records, affidavits, and recordings. We have allotted one final month to collect information regarding these meetings, before the release of the final report to the public containing our findings and recommendations.”

The TV gets muted again. The channel is changed to footage of record numbers of protestors outside the White House, security and police forces pushing them back and dispersing the angry crowds. 

“Secret meetings? Finally, something juicy.”

“There’s no way he can survive much longer. He’ll be out within the year.”

“I don’t know… You’re forgetting that no matter what evidence the report reveals, an impeachment bill has to get through the Senate, and Senate Republicans haven’t been ones for seeing much reason lately.”

“But how can this report indicate anything other than obstruction of justice, if there are willful cover-ups like that?”

On the sofa, Rey keeps quiet with her lips pursed. 

Across the city, at home for the first time in nearly a month, Ben is breaking things.

* * *

“What do you think, Solo?”

Ben thinks his nerves are a second away from giving out.

“I think we don’t have nearly enough evidence to determine with any certainty that Tehran was behind the tanker attacks. There are too many other regional players who would benefit from inciting an armed conflict in the Gulf. We can’t play into games here. Both the Saudis and the Emirates would take any opportunity to set up Iran for US retaliation. Not to mention Daesh-“

“Oh please,” the Defense Secretary cuts him off. “ISIS doesn’t have nearly the resources.”

“How they would love for us to think that.”

The Secretary ignores Ben’s interjection. “Why would they hit a Japanese tanker too?”

“Anyone behind the attacks would benefit from more confusion, plus a cover-up of their true motives.”

Ben looks towards the President, whose only contribution in the last hour of bickering had been to ask Ben’s opinion. Even with his hope already strangled, Ben makes a final appeal.

“Sir, we’ll likely never know the truth about the Gulf attacks, so that cannot have a bearing on your decision today. We should focus on the facts. We know a US drone was downed, but we also know that a heavy-handed response would set off a powder keg. It would likely set off a new armed conflict, while we’re committed to troop drawdown in the region. We know that even a drone strike will cause innocent casualties.” 

“Solo’s focusing on the wrong facts here. The only one that matters is they took down one of our drones and it’s time for us to retaliate.”

Ben’s fists squeeze. His entire chest constricts with frustration that nearly blinds him.

“Because we were in Iranian airspace and we all know it. If we retaliate now, we’ll lose all handle on the situation. This is a chain of aggression we don’t want to incite.”

The Defense Secretary waves Ben off. “Doesn’t change the fact that they’re too bold and need a reminder of their place. Iran’s got nuclear capability in their sights again, and they haven’t been listening to the warnings.”

Ben looks back at the President, and whatever was still working inside him breaks completely. The man is nodding at the warmonger to Ben’s left. 

“Prepare a strike package. I want our planes in the air tonight.”

While the Defense Secretary gets the Pentagon on the line, Ben whirls from the room. 

He can’t be present for this. He can’t believe this is all about to happen right before his eyes, and he failed to stop a single domino in the chain. He knows exactly where the final one will fall. 

Ben lurches into the first bathroom he finds. He falls to his knees over the toilet and coughs up everything he hasn’t eaten over the last two days. He is sick for an hour, and it will burn for days. 

* * *

The strike is called off minutes before, but Ben’s own devastation is complete. He can’t go back to sitting around a table with men who almost rushed into war with pride as their only justification; who pick their facts and almost inflicted unilateralism on the world at gunpoint. 

_Nothing. We’ve learned nothing._

It’s all he thinks anymore, as he sits silently in briefings and crisis meetings. As he questions how he kept his faith for so long; how he spent years at State with men just like this and yet he’d been convinced they didn’t run the system.

No, they’d only designed it.

_Rey was right. Nothing good comes of this._

* * *

Smoke fills the skies of Washington. The screams of emergency responder vehicles overflow the streets. Chaos and confusion engulf the airwaves. 

Mere blocks away from the White House, returning from a meeting with the Saudi Arabian Ambassador, a car in the President’s motorcade goes up in an explosion of flames. 

Out at a restaurant with a friend when it happens, Rey watches the panicked news broadcasts with horror pounding away at her – rising until it reaches a crushing rhythm. 

Then, the news anchors on every station begin blaring the new details. Rey has to hear it repeated five times before the meaning of the words begins to slice at her.

“We are learning now that the President did not attend the meeting with the Saudi Ambassador alone this morning. He was accompanied by his Advisor for Foreign Policy, Ben Solo. As security protocols dictate, each of them rode in a separate car. At this point, reports are not yet certain of who was seated in the car that blew up, but at least two casualties have been confirmed so far…”

All sound drops out as Rey sinks to the floor. She has no idea how much time passes, before she finally becomes aware of her friend shaking her and yelling her name repeatedly.

“Rey? What the hell, Rey. Are you okay? It’s going to be okay.”

Rey only shakes her head. Numb, she continues staring at the TV. The headlines change.

_President and Solo in Motorcade Explosion. Survivors as yet unknown._

Rey can’t breathe. There are tears on her face and she can’t breathe. 

Her friend is pulling her to her feet. 

“Breathe, Rey, you have to breathe. It’s going to be okay.”

Rey shakes her head again – this time violent and desperate. She can’t look away from the TV, both despairing to know the truth and unable to even think the possibility of…

She’s hyperventilating. Her voice shakes as she barely manages, “No. No. It’s not… It’s impossible. He-He can’t…”

Rey’s friend is looking at her with real alarm now. She’s one of Rey’s closest friends, but Rey never told a single soul about her affair with Ben. 

“Rey, calm down. Take a seat and drink some water…”

“No. No. _No…_ ” 

Rey shakes her friend off, ignoring her shouts as Rey rushes for the door. Her hands are shaking so badly it takes her multiple tries to pull out her phone and find Ben’s number. 

She calls.

No answer. 

She calls again.

Still no answer.

Already requesting a car, Rey types out a message with shaking fingers. 

Rey: _Please tellk wme yeour ok_

Rey: _Pleasde answer_

Rey: _Pelase anser damn you_

Rey: _Be okay_

Rey: _Ben_

Rey: _Pplease_

Rey: _Answer me_

There’s still no response when she gets in the car. By now, she is fully crying. 

She chokes out Ben’s address to the driver. It doesn’t matter that he wouldn’t be home at this time of day. It’s his place. Where he goes at the end of the day. Where she’s spent so many nights with him. It’s where she will see him today. Where she’ll see him again. 

She pulls up every news site she can think of on her phone and begins a frantic rotation between them. Still, there are no conclusive answers.

And still, Ben doesn’t reply. 

Refreshing each news page usually means the video replays of the black car rocked off its front wheels by the force of an explosion from its undercarriage. Footage of the fire bursting through the car windows, just before it flips over completely. 

Rey squeezes her eyes shut when it becomes impossible to bear the sight any longer. She breaks down in a fresh wave of stifled sobs when Ben still doesn’t answer. 

Rey: _Please_

Rey: _I need you_

Rey: _Need you to be ok_

Rey: _Ben_

Finally, the car pulls up to the familiar white house. Rey hasn’t been here in months, not since their fight here about the border camps, but she runs to the door heedless. She frantically alternates between ringing the bell and banging on the door. 

After a minute of crashing her fist on the door, when it becomes painfully apparent no one’s going to answer, she starts mindlessly slamming both hands against the door. 

The burn spreading across her knuckles is a welcome contrast to the panicked despair growing inside her. The noise of it distracts her from how very, very alone she is. 

“You bastard,” she chokes out as she eventually sinks down onto the step before the door, her strength evaporating. 

“Selfish bastard.” 

His voice instantly comes back to her. 

_Yes. I’m a selfish bastard._

His cracked, rumbling words right against her ear, as he held her right on the other side of this door. After he saved her from explosions that might have been meant for her. When he took care of her for three days straight, never leaving her side or even the house once. 

“Ben,” Rey whimpers, curling up on the step with her head down between her knees, her arms clutched upward as if trying to protect herself. 

Even though it’s too late for that. 

His own explosions came, and she wasn’t there. She hasn’t even _seen him_ for weeks. She hasn’t responded the few times he texted. _Complicit and spineless_ – Those were the last words she said to him. 

They should have been so much different. 

Rey shakes her way through successive waves and bursts of tears as the sun sinks lower in the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a big chapter for both of them with revelations of various sizes on both sides. With another terrible place to stop and I'm sorry for being the worst ;____; I've only got editing to do for the next part though, so I'll do my best not to leave Ben's fate in the air for too long...  
> I'd appreciate all your reflections in the meantime!
> 
> Find me [over here](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


	9. A Change Of Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey says nothing. 
> 
> She can’t. 
> 
> Instead, she lifts shaking hands to cover her mouth. When she starts to cry again, the sounds are only barely stifled by her fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave you in suspense. This chapter was already done and it's one with a lot of extra work put in and that I've been looking forward to sharing. I hope the speed of this update makes up for the pain of that last cliffhanger! 
> 
> [Song credit for the title.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc&list=RD1Wl1B7DPegc&start_radio=1)
> 
> [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/pseuds/KyloTrashForever) for the mood board credit.

It’s just beginning to get dark when the sound of a car begins to rumble from a distance. 

Rey, in a daze and still crumpled on the step, slowly lifts her head from under her arms. 

She squints to make sure this isn’t just her imagination. The entire world’s been spinning all day.

Slowly, things come into focus. Two sets of headlights approaching the house from the long driveway. 

Rey begins pulling herself to her feet, only now realizing how weak her legs are. 

She winces, her exhausted eyes aching when the bright glare of the headlights sweeps over her.

She stands unmoving, no idea what to do or what to think – The last hours she spent here leaving her shell-shocked and unsure how to process the activity before her eyes, so sudden after the hours of hopeless silence.

The cars stop right in front of the house. The engines cut and the doors to the front car open. Two men in dark suits emerge, holding handguns before them. 

“Ma’am, what are you doing here? We’re going to need to see some ID.”

Before Rey can react, a commotion erupts at the second car. The sound of raised voices escapes when one of the doors open.

“She’s fine – I said she’s fine!”

More doors open and people step out, seemingly attempting to stop a passenger from getting out. After a moment of struggle, the passenger emerges anyway. 

Disheveled, with lingering smears of soot in his hair and across his rumpled clothes, but whole and standing and his attention only on Rey.

Ben. 

Rey’s chest begins heaving again, before the sight of him and what it means fully sets in. It spreads through her slowly – the dawning deliverance just as powerful as the loss that had overtaken her completely. 

She says nothing. 

She can’t. 

Instead, she lifts shaking hands to cover her mouth. When she starts to cry again, the sounds are only barely stifled by her fingers. 

Ben rushes towards her. The security staff on high alert shout protests (Ben registered no immediate family or other cohabitants at his house), but he hears none of them. 

He pulls her into his arms the second he reaches her, and she clings to him as life surges through her again. Rey can do nothing to stifle the tears as she presses her face tight to his shoulder. She’s shaking from head to foot, and Ben wraps her up almost entirely against himself.

Behind him, his extra security staff pointedly look away to begin securing the perimeter of the house.

“I’m so sorry,” Ben murmurs just for her, when he feels how tightly her small hands are gripping him to her. “They took my phones right away to change the numbers and make sure there were no taps.”

“ _Ben_ ,” is all Rey finally manages to get out, her voice still watery and muffled against his shoulder. 

Around them, a handful of security guards are opening the front door and going inside to check the house before Ben will be allowed in. 

Ben wishes they would hurry the hell up. He wants to get Rey away from these glaring headlights; away from prying eyes. He wants to hold her and be alone with her and assure her it’s all okay.

He hasn’t heard her voice in months. He hates the way he has to hear it now, strangled in tears. 

“Ben,” she says again, voice hiccupping and every inch of her still clinging to him. 

“I’m here, Rey.”

Finally, security emerges from the house and Ben sees them nod approval. 

“Come on, darling. Let’s get you inside.”

Rey lets go of him only to the degree that’s necessary to walk. Ben keeps an arm around her, until they’re inside the entrance atrium with the door closed behind them, and he can wrap her up all over again. 

Rey’s crying softly against his chest, most of her tears gone but the shock of the relief still taking time to ease. 

Ben reaches a hand up to smooth her hair. He kisses her forehead, an ache slicing through him when he realizes how long it’s been since his lips found that spot so perfect for his height. 

“I was starting to think I would never see you again,” Ben whispers, voice so fragile that Rey might have been the one nearly lost today. 

Rey manages a tiny, watery laugh. “Ben. You were almost _gone_ today. Almost gone. I thought I would never-”

She cuts off, unable to even finish the sentence. She burrows herself more deeply against his chest, squeezing her eyes shut against the empty terror that was almost her reality. 

Ben hushes her gently, lips along her hair again. 

“They got a decoy car,” he explains. “Whoever the inside conspirator was, their info wasn’t accurate. That driver had an empty car, but he was targeted by mistake.”

“The second casualty?”

“A passenger in a civilian car when the fire spread, before it was put out.”

“Where was your…”

“I was in the car right behind.”

Rey sucks in a breath, but Ben strokes her hair. 

“The smoke enveloped the car immediately, but my driver managed to pull off the road right away, instead of going through the fire.”

_Too close. Too close too close too close_ blares through Rey’s head in a wild loop. So close that her distress hasn’t yet lifted; that it’s taking a lot of processing time for her mind to separate out _he’s safe_ from what happened to him today.

Feeling how she’s still trembling in his arms, remembering the sight of her flushed, tear-streaked face crumpling in relief when she saw him – after she must have waited hours here for him – Ben tells the truth. 

His voice is weak, imbued with the terrible awe of what he experienced. Feeling her here, warm and soft and crying for _him_ , makes him remember the worst part of it.

He hides his face against her hair. 

“We couldn’t see out the windshield for a moment, the smoke was so thick. That was the moment when anything could have happened. It could have ended for me right then and there. And I just thought… _God_ , I’ll never get to hold you again.”

Rey makes a sound like an aborted sob into his chest as he squeezes her in thankfulness. 

“I-I sat outside here, for hours. I kept thinking of what I said to you last time and I-… I couldn’t bear that being the last thing. That couldn’t be the last thing I ever say to you.”

“You had every right to be furious, Rey. Of course you were. I hate myself for everything I said that day. Hate that it happened at all.”

“Shhh,” Rey says quickly, abruptly pulling back enough so she can look up into Ben’s face. Fingers trembling, she reaches up to stroke her fingers along his jaw until she cups his face between her hands. His eyes flutter closed, a sound of reprieve escaping him. 

Rey bites her lip as she takes him in fully. The whole height and breadth of him here with her – his warmth and the feel of his strong hands spanning across her hips making it impossible to doubt. 

He’s here. He’s safe. He’s with her. 

“Let’s not talk about hate. It’s all wrong. It has nothing to do with us at all.”

Ben tilts his head just enough so his lips can reach her fingertips. When a metallic taste greets his kiss, he reaches up to take one of Rey’s hands between his own. He frowns when he sees dried blood across her split knuckles. 

Rey shakes her head, giving a dismissive laugh at herself. She tries to pull her hand away. “I kept banging on the door, like that would make you appear to answer it.”

Ben doesn’t let go of her hand, just stares at the injury in silence for a moment before looking back to her face, expression moved. 

“Let’s clean you up.”

Careful not to touch the cuts, he holds onto her hand as he turns to lead her upstairs, through his bedroom, into the bathroom.

Rey watches his wide back as she follows him, and nothing inside her makes sense. 

_He’s so immense. How could he have almost disappeared? How is he always so solid, here with me, but then when he leaves me he might just be… gone. At any moment._

Ben sits her on the countertop, beside the sink. He kneels down to open the cabinets and retrieve a first aid kit. Rey watches him silently – watches the crease between his eyebrows as he sifts through the supplies; watches his hands (dirt beneath his own fingernails and soot around his wrists) as he runs hot water in the sink and dips in a clean cloth. 

He comes to stand between her knees, his head bowed and a slight frown on his face as he gently takes her hand between his own. Rey makes no sound of pain as he begins dabbing the dirt and dried blood away. 

_How could anyone want to hurt you?_

He murmurs an apology as he rubs across the largest cut. Finally, he lays the cloth aside and reaches for a roll of gauze. He lifts the roll to his lips and rips the seal with his teeth, before beginning to wind the gauze around her hand. 

Rey is past understanding. She is far past the slightest rational inkling of everything raging in her heart right now. 

“Ben,” she breathes, her free hand itching for him. “You shouldn’t… You’re the one who nearly…”

Ben shakes his head slightly, not looking up from where he’s ripping and tying the end of the gauze. 

“I’m fine, Rey, really. About ten medics checked me. I got a little dirty, sure, but other than that I just breathed in a little smoke. But I’m used to that.” 

His shoulders lift in the tiniest shrug – an attempt to play down the gravity for Rey’s sake of what nearly happened to him – as he moves to her other hand to begin cleaning it. 

“My lungs are well trained by now.”

Rey can’t look away from his face – at the careful attention he refuses to divert from her injured hands. She bites her lip, wondering if this is what’s grounding him, after the horror he lived through. 

She starts trembling again, just a tiny bit, as he wraps her other hand. Misunderstanding, he hushes her gently and traces comforting circles against the inside of her wrist. Rey waits, and waits, and waits, as he finally finishes twining the bandage. 

He lays the roll of gauze aside. He takes both of her hands in his own again, hiding them almost completely behind the wide span of his fingers, his gaze still fixed downwards. 

There is a dark streak of soot at his temple, fading out of sight in his black hair but so, so dark and wrong and disturbing, smeared across the pale skin just above his eyebrow. 

Rey wants to be the one tending to _him_. She wants to scrub away all the dirt and soot, every last trace of what nearly happened to him. Every speck of evidence that he was almost taken from her. She wants to take the cloth and scrub until he’s clean and bare and safe and _hers_.

Rey’s knees lock together on either side of his hips at the same moment her hands break free from his to reach up for his face. Her bandaged hands are clumsy, but she doesn’t have a thought for finesse as she tugs him down to where her lips can reach. 

Ben makes a soft noise against her mouth, but sinks into her immediately as Rey scrambles to reach her arms up and around as much of his shoulders as she can reach; as her legs pull him in a step tighter. 

As she kisses him with all the blunt force of today’s trauma, barely softened by suddenly-released months of yearning, his hands flutter down her back until they land at her waist. After a few more seconds of her kissing him like this – her mouth insisting _you’re here you’re mine you’re safe_ , a rumbling sound lifts from his chest and his hands tighten, sliding her closer against him. They keep kissing until the tables turn, when Rey gives up trying to fit all of him in the circles of her arms and legs and lets him envelop her instead. 

He does it so easily. 

“ _Ben_ ,” Rey whispers right between his lips, already pushing herself against him. “I need to _feel you_ , here and everywhere. Show me you’re really alright.”

“Rey,” Ben breathes in a groan as she begins grinding her hips against him. 

“Come inside me. Please.”

It takes Ben hardly any effort to scoop Rey up from the counter, with how tightly she’s already locked herself around him. His face is buried in her neck, teeth nipping at the places that make Rey mewl for him, as he makes his way back to the bedroom. 

She reaches for him the second he lays her on the bed. She pulls him down to her immediately, needing every inch of him against every inch of her even as she rips and tugs his ruined clothes out of the way. 

She can’t stop kissing him, and she’s so thankful that even after all this time, Ben’s hands know her body by heart. He doesn’t even need to look, to unclasp her bra or slide his hands lower to push her underwear off her hips. 

Rey kicks them off, and the instant they’re both naked she pulls him straight to her core. Her legs lock around him, her fingers squeeze against the muscles in his back, and she presses her face into the curve of his neck as she rocks against him, blessed reassurance surging through her as she feels the length of him just as solid as it ever was, sliding against her heat and only a moment away from where it belongs. 

Rey’s lips reach and kiss and suck everywhere, a soft groan rumbling from him when her lips brush his earlobe. 

“Show me,” she breathes against his ear, her voice begging just like the wetness gradually trickling from her center to coat his cock. “I want to be full of you.”

“I’m here, Rey,” he murmurs, strained as he adjusts his hips. As he reaches down to cup one of his hands against her hip and tilt her up towards him in the way that makes her thighs slide farther open. “Darling. I’m here,” he murmurs, his breathing labored as he begins sliding into her, inch by slow inch. 

Rey makes a deep, broken noise of fulfillment. Ben feels her body melting open around him, feels her thighs sliding still wider and her body opening to him with a mindless sigh of relief as there’s simply no resistance at all. 

He’s shaking by the time his hips are flush against hers; by the time she’s clinging to him and whispering _Ben Ben my Ben_ against his lips while inside, her body pulls him still deeper like it never means to let him go. 

There’s nothing in the world he wants more than to live here, inside her. 

Inside her _is_ the world.

Except a moment later, he forces himself to draw back from the embrace of her inner muscles – just enough to drive back in and ignite a place inside her that makes her whole body go slack. Her face wipes clean in pleasure as she trembles around him, and Ben could survive forever on just the guttural noises she makes as he holds her between his hands and begins thrusting back and forth across that same spot of rapture. 

This is perhaps the one thing he wants more. To set her ablaze like this. To hear the way she whimpers and shouts and begs his name with such profound emotion in her voice. To feel the way her nails dig into his skin, to taste her gasps, every time he pushes inside of her and reaches the spot where they cease to exist as separate people who disagree and fight and feel so many complications. 

There’s nothing in the world complicated here. Ben holds her thighs in place around him when she goes completely weak, kisses away her sweet pleading for him, and keeps pushing deeper and deeper inside her until she’s crying out completion. 

Rey doesn’t let go. She wants to keep him here, all of him inside her forever, even after she comes and he’s so deep she might unravel completely…

“I thought- I thought I would never feel this again,” she gasps, the final shocks of her orgasm dislodging tears from her eyes. 

Ben kisses them; kisses the broken noises she makes as he continues his slow undulations inside her. 

“Does it… does it feel the same, for you?” Ben barely manages in strangled words. He’s never had the courage to ask, but right now there’s never been less between them and he’s never felt intensity like he does now, as they share something so much more profound than just sensation. 

Rey doesn’t need to ask what he means. She holds him tighter, feels the groan from deep in his chest as the floating euphoria inside her grips him still tighter. At this point, her body doesn’t know _too much_. It only knows _Stay. Always._

“Yes, Ben. Yes.”

He breathes out in a manic rush against her neck. She reaches to smooth her fingers through his hair, feeling his warm whimper along her skin as his hips stutter out one final consummation. 

“ _Rey._ ”

Rey locks around him with everything in her, desperate not to let him out until her body has absorbed everything it can from him. Everything he can give. 

Looking up at him, Rey catches the barest sparkle in his eyelashes. She reaches up to stroke beneath his eyes, until she draws him down into a kiss that’s slow and thankful and earnest. 

“You belong here.”

It’s the barest whisper, tucked into the corner of his kiss-flushed lips, while the final rush of him releases inside her.

Rey squeezes around every inch of where he pulsates within her, her body clutching at him as he fills her in every way she’d never dreamt. Never known she could have dreamt.

She tilts her head to kiss the other corner of his mouth. 

“You belong here.”

Ben remembers. Of course he remembers. It reduces him to pieces as he slowly pulls free of her – only when the searing heat of her starts to burn. 

He kisses her again and again, at once consoling when she whines protest at her sudden emptiness; then so thankful he might weep. 

She’s still so hot, between her legs. Still so wet. 

Ben mouths down her body, sucking open-mouthed kisses along her breasts, rolling her nipples beneath his tongue until she shudders under him. 

She’s so, so pliant and relaxed when he reaches lower. He lifts her thighs up and open with no effort at all, to find her still flushed and gleaming and yearning for him. 

He just looks for a moment, spellbound. She whines from above, as some of his spend trickles from her and he sees her hole clench, as if trying to keep it in. 

Ben makes a pained sound in his throat. 

“Is it… too much, darling?”

“No, Ben, please. Please.”

He falls to his elbows, hooking his arms beneath her thighs and dragging her down against his mouth. 

She tastes- beyond words. Fucked and fulfilled and yet continuing to gush so sweetly against his lips. 

Whenever the salty taste of himself leaks out with her slick, Ben gathers it with his tongue and feeds it back inside her. She feels exactly what he’s doing, and trembles down to her toes. 

“Yes,” she breathes. “Stay inside.”

Drawn, always drawn to where she is all things too good for this world, Ben seals his lips to her entrance and sweeps his tongue inside. He groans against her, feeling where she’s hot and well fucked and still quivering

Rey’s head falls back as her fingers knot in Ben’s hair. Her hips work down against his tongue. 

“Inside me, Ben. Where you belong. Making me whole.”

It’s been ages since last time, but Ben will never forget the spot only his tongue can reach – the spot that splits her open in the delicate, deliberate way completely different from his cock.

Ben adjusts his mouth. His fingers tighten along her thighs as he presses his tongue farther in and up, _up_ until…

Rey’s entire body jolts, her fingers tightening in his hair as she cries out. Ben opens his eyes as he works the tip of his tongue over the sensitive spot inside her. He feels his own arousal kindling again as he watches the visible waves of pleasure sliding through her, each time his tongue works across it. 

He watches her chest heaving, watches her face contort when it’s almost _too much_ , watches her bite her lip only for her mouth to fall open again as she bucks against his tongue and gasps his name. 

Just when Rey’s near tears, when the fire keeps building and building with nowhere to go, Ben draws out and laps upwards. He breathes a curse when he finds her clit so swollen and bright, nearly searing his tongue it’s so hot. Rey outright sobs when he sucks it into his mouth. Her legs are trembling against his shoulders, and he swirls his tongue around her until finally, _finally_ she gushes against his mouth in breathless relief. 

Utterly spent, Rey can only reach her hands out for him. 

It’s where he belongs, after all.

Ben clambers up beside her, and closes her in against him. Rey can only hum in satisfaction, pillowing her head against his chest and curling a hand tightly around his bicep. 

She rubs her cheek against his skin, emitting an approving noise when Ben’s lips brush across her forehead. 

“I’m here, Rey. I’m here with you.”

* * *

  


At some point, Ben becomes aware of Rey’s arms grappling to drag him closer, after they separated in sleep. 

He helps her by rolling close against her again. Rey makes a sleepy noise of approval. 

Outside, the morning sun has begun to nudge at the curtains. 

Rey feels Ben rubbing his cheek against the top of her head. She feels how his fingers keep tracing patterns across her skin, as if trying to express something.

They’re both awake, now. When Ben speaks, it’s with no lingering haze. 

“I thought I had fucked everything up beyond fixing. I thought you were gone from my life for good. And I didn’t blame you at all, just myself.”

Finally, Rey is beginning to understand his edge of desperation. To him, being the one who’d hurt her and the reason they’d separated had been just as devastating as yesterday’s explosion. 

“I’m not good for anything. Nothing good, Rey. I’ve tried and I’ve failed, and it was so arrogant to think-”

“You _can_ do good. I’ve been telling you this for as long as I’ve known you. It’s not easy, but Ben, you are stronger than you know.”

Against her shoulder, Ben’s shaking his head slightly. 

“I’ve only gotten to where I am by pretending to be someone I’m not. It’s been so long… I don’t know who I am anymore beneath it all. I don’t know if there’s... anything left of me there.”

Rey frowns. In the past, this is where she would have grown angry with him. Where she might have called him a coward; accused him of prizing his own self-interest above the misgivings of his conscience. But now, she feels not even a touch of anger. Instead, it’s a warm stab of determination in her chest, shouting to reach him. 

Rey lifts her shoulder to dislodge where he’s curled against her. When he has to shift onto his back, Rey clambers on top of him. She lays her hands across his chest and leans close, so he can’t look anywhere else but into her eyes. 

“You _are_ a good man. That’s who you are, beneath all the bullshit. If you don’t believe it yourself, then believe me.”

Ben’s looking at her with his eyes wide and open. She can tell he’s listening, but something inside him is still trapped in shadow, just beyond where she can reach. 

Rey grips tighter. 

“I know who you really are. And that’s why it frustrates me so much to see you hurting yourself. To see you putting on a mask that suffocates you.”

Ben looks past her and up to the ceiling. Rey can see the struggle in his eyes. She can see his throat working as he processes each one of her words. 

His voice comes out soft and a little wondrous. 

“I never thought I’d hear you say something like that.”

Rey leans closer to lay a kiss against his jaw.

“It’s true. It took me a while to see it, under all the effort you make to hide it beneath an assholeish exterior.”

Ben releases a single snort of laughter from his chest, as his arms come up to twine around her and tuck her in beneath his chin. 

He thinks about how close everything came to disaster. Before yesterday, he thinks back to an attempted missile strike he wasn’t able to stop. He thinks of all the times he has stayed silent since then, when the horror and cruelty of it all towers so tall, he feels powerless. 

The times he has imagined his resignation letter, but the words become garbled as they succumb to the image of someone else in his place. Someone whose arguments are more forceful and effective, and goad the Cabinet towards still more destruction. 

Destruction that almost consumed him – that almost kept him from feeling the small, powerful shape of Rey against him ever again. 

Down, beneath it all, there’s an awful emptiness in his gut. A hunger he knows food won’t sate. A hunger that sickens him. Whenever his hands start to shake because of it, he’ll fill his hands with Rey until it stops. He’ll breathe in the scent of her hair until the itch abates. 

Somehow, even after everything, she thinks he’s a _good man_. And Ben can’t – he can’t lose that. She can never know. He will try to become as strong as she thinks he is, even though there’s so much that fills him with shame. If she sees so much in him, then perhaps there’s a chance. Even after everything he has done. Even though he is so abjectly weak…

“Ben?” she whispers when she feels him quaking beneath her. 

“ _Ben_ ,” she says with more urgency when she sees the wetness trickling down his cheeks. 

Ben dips his head in attempt to hide it, but Rey’s already there, stroking his hair back and making soothing noises against his cheek.

Rey moves to lay next to him, tugging him close against her chest. She pulls and squeezes until this time, somehow, she’s able to gather almost all of him in her arms. 

Silently, Ben finally lets himself fall apart. 

* * *

  


The next morning, Rey is cooking when Ben finally decides to turn the news on. His various phones have been buzzing since daybreak, but Ben simply rose from bed to silence them all and came right back to wrap himself around Rey under the sheets.

Stories are still blaring about the attempted car bombing, but aside from the fact that both targets were unharmed, there are no concrete developments. 

He’s just about to turn the TV off again, when breaking news from the Special Counsel begins rolling. When Rey hears, she sets down the spatula and comes to his side to listen. 

“We have set one week from today as the release date for our report and findings. We have succeeded in collecting details regarding several of the key meetings held with foreign contacts shortly after the President’s inauguration. However, questions remain regarding a meeting involving State Department staff on January 21st, of which no recordings, notes, or witnesses have yet to be found.”

When Ben hears the date, he sinks slowly down to the sofa behind him as if all air has been seeped from his lungs. 

“The report release date has been extended to one week from now, in order to give a final chance to anyone with information about this meeting to come forward. Depending on the substance of their contribution, witness immunity may be offered for anyone who offers testimony.”

From the other room, Rey can hear what sounds like all of Ben’s phones buzzing in a frantic choir. She looks down, and finds him sitting with his hands folded in front of him, his forehead resting down against his nested fingers. 

“Ben?” she asks hesitantly. “Do you… know anything about it?” 

Ben lets out a low curse as he lifts his head. His gaze remains downcast, his expression both stunned and despondent.

“I was there.”

“But… you hadn’t even joined the Cabinet by then. You were still at State.”

Ben nods, sighing loudly as he scrubs his palms across his face. Rey comes to sit beside him, her movements hesitant. Her heart is pounding before he even starts to speak.

“I had contacts the President needed. It was time for him to make good on some of his campaign promises – some that weren’t made to the American people. After the role Russian hackers played in his election, he needed a discrete meeting to confirm the details of money laundering to Russian accounts.”

Rey makes a concerted effort not to react. She can tell by the way Ben’s bent over as he speaks, the way every inch of him radiates with tension, that he’s not the slightest bit proud of what he’s telling her. And yet – he’s telling her. He’s confiding in her something that could break him. Something that could bring his entire world crashing down.

And he’s doing it immediately, without even second-guessing the power he’s handing to her. Without doubting her trust. 

“I attended frequent Security Council meetings, while I was International Organizations Secretary. I developed a lot of Russian contacts, and I knew exactly the low-profile type he needed. I set up the meeting on January 21st.”

Rey takes a deep, slow breath, marshaling her thoughts in order. 

On one side, she’s lapsing back into the dark anger of _How could you? You know better; this isn’t you._

But at the same time, she finds herself strangely calm at the revelation. Because this could be it – The center of everything. The eye of his storm. 

Finally, she asks in a steady voice, “Who was at the meeting?”

“Only me, the President, and the guy with a line straight to Putin. The President was quite clear – No one else was to know. I was asked to make sure of that.”

“Jesus, Ben. That means either you come forward and spill all, or it will never come out. You’re the only one.”

From the other room, Ben’s phones are thundering again. He doesn’t move. 

“Is that him? Panicking that you’re about to betray him?”

Ben gives a listless shake of his head. “Since I arranged that meeting, he trusts me.” The contempt in his voice is palpable. “Trusts me to be a good lapdog who’ll never bite. It’s in large part why I was offered the Cabinet position. He’s probably once again just trying to come up with a way to shut down the investigation.”

Ben falls silent, his expression morose as he stares at the floor. Without quite meaning to, Rey reaches over to brush stray strands of hair from his forehead. 

Mere hours ago, she’d been in the shower with him, soaping his hair for him, then doing it all over again until she was satisfied that every last particle of smoke and soot and dirt was gone. 

The aggression she thinks should be rising in her right now remains at bay. Right now, she may be witness to one of the most crucial crossroads in Ben’s life, but after the past 24 hours, she’s simply unable to exist anywhere but on his side. 

She slides her hand into one of his, and squeezes back when he does. She’s never seen him so deathly still or silent. 

She almost _lost him._

And after the way he… the way they… 

Rey doesn’t shy from the idea, finally. It’s the truth. She’s not ashamed of what felt so all-powerful and meant to be.

The way they made love.

This is his decision to make. Rey knows she’s done everything in her ability to share what she sees in him – what she hopes he will finally embrace, even in a world and political establishment that’s told him every day to stifle the warmth and light that lives inside him. 

Rey curls closer to him, sliding an arm over his shoulders. She tilts his head towards her, leaving a soft kiss just beside his ear. 

“You’re the one with the final piece. The only one who can make that whole report make any difference. It’s your power, and it’s your choice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This chapter essence and soundscape](https://youtu.be/6dBVYN9pjk0)
> 
> And so our babies are reunited (and safe, thank goodness) and once again reminded of how much they likely belong together. <3 But of course another hurdle is already rising before them... 
> 
> I angsted over and rewrote this love scene to probably an unhealthy degree. I'd love if you guys shared any and all thoughts on anything in this chapter!
> 
> Or alternately come flail/cry over on [my tumblr](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) \- where I do a regular combination of both. :') Thanks to all of you for being the best readers ever. <3


	10. The Ballad of Me and My Brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey is surprised by what she hears him whisper in a barely-there, trembling confession, long minutes later.
> 
> “I’m scared. Fucking terrified of what’s around the corner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After much agonizing, I'm finally ready (I think) to press on into the final stretch of this story. Sections of this chapter were rewritten, cut, new elements added - but the climax scene towards the end is one I've had planned for a while. I hope it all fits together for you all!
> 
> If you haven't listened to [the title track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc) yet, why the heck not???

In a remote corner of the FBI headquarters, investigators are typing and coding after dark. The rest of the building is mostly empty by now, but this team is working a time-sensitive mandate straight from the President. 

One man suddenly pauses and sits back from his computer. He leans back to call, “Sir, I think I may have found something.”

The head of the task force stands from his own workstation and comes to check. 

On his screen, the investigator enlarges the photographs he just uncovered. The supervisor leans close, considering. 

Taken from just outside a shadowy back room at The Hamilton bar, Ben Solo and Rey Johnson are clearly recognizable even from the skewed angle of the photos. They’re standing close together. In one, his hand is on her arm. 

In the pictures, they don’t exactly look like they were arguing.

The supervisor nods as he straightens again. “Dig on this. We have to be sure before we report it as usable. If there’s nothing else to find, then draw up a list of names who might have intel.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

Audie Cornish: "Ms. Johnson, thank you for joining us today on _All Things Considered_ and welcome to the show."

Rey Johnson: "Thank you for having me and please, just call me Rey. There have been way too many people calling me by my last name lately and it’s still weirding me out."

"You have been thrust into quite the spotlight since your viral speech from the ICE protest - even the President commented. We had a hard time working this interview into your schedule." 

"It has been a whirlwind few weeks for sure. What’s been so odd to me about it all is that I certainly didn’t mean to start anything. I went to that protest about a month after my non-profit had to close its doors because our federal funding was pulled. I was at such a low point, and if not for the videos, I doubt I would even remember what I said at that rally. I was just angry, and energized to be out doing something worthwhile again."

"From my impression, your newfound fame is not just about what you said, but how you said it. It’s clear you come from a career where you speak up for people to empower themselves, and you believe in the capacity for positive change."

"Absolutely. Today, more than ever, we all have to continue believing in that. No matter how difficult it becomes."

"Could you tell us a bit more about the kind of work you did in your last job?"

"I worked in the development sector, which is very insular and not as exciting as it may sound. Most DC-based international development organizations are funded primarily through US government grants, which means there are loads of specialized technical requirements that have to be met, and a ton of red tape about what sorts of programs we can and can’t use the funds for." 

"Could you describe what a normal day was like?"

"My role was about half operations management, half program guidance. In the morning I might be making sure we have the proper contracts in place for security at our field offices or for the smaller subgrants we give to local grassroots projects. In the afternoon, I might be on a call with staff in one of our field offices to design a human rights advocacy training we’ll conduct for local activists."

"It sure sounds like you were never bored."

"Definitely not – There was always too much to do and never enough time in the day."

"Now, I know this can’t be something you enjoy talking about, but would you mind telling us how the funding cut played out for your organization?"

"Well, we heard rumblings from our State Department and USAID donors as soon as the administration changed that funding priorities might be shifted. Formal funding allocations have to go through Congress, so we knew it would be a long process and we continued with programs as usual. But then our grants started being hit one by one. My coworkers and I had to abandon our programs one at a time, when the money stopped. For our largest programs in Tunisia, Mexico, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, that meant abruptly closing field offices with dozens of local employees."

"And you were the ones who had to pass on that terrible news, even though you had no control over it."

"It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do."

"Rey, do you anticipate the political climate will shift enough to allow non-profits like yours to resume their work again?"

"Sooner or later, yes, I know it will. Whether that will happen soon enough for me to resume the initiatives I worked on before any progress we made backslides… that remains to be seen."

"In your opinion, as someone who’s fluent in DC politics and worked in a job that required regularly liaising with government offices, do you think the Special Counsel’s inquiry and soon-to-be-released report will help shift the climate?"

"I… I don’t know. When the inquiry began, I thought so. I thought that its goal was to establish a narrative of truth that’s been difficult for anyone to grasp, no matter their partisan alignment. If the current administration only came into office due to some improper interference – especially if that interference was foreign – then learning the truth of that might move us closer to an administration with priorities that do align with and serve the interests of the American people."

"And now?"

"I’m sorry?"

"You said that was your view when the inquiry began. Has it changed?"

"Oh… It’s difficult to say. It seems that… a whole lot is riding on a few people. At this point, all we can do is wait and see. See what conclusions the Special Counsel draws, and what kind of information is provided to the investigation before that."

"Indeed. We’ll all be on the edge of our seats this week, until the report is released. Now Rey, I have one final question for you, if I may."

"Of course."

"Working in international development, it’s clear you’ve spent a good deal of time articulating why certain policies might be either detrimental or beneficial to the people they’re meant to serve. I must say, what’s so refreshing about talking to you is that even though you’ve worked within government regulations and inefficiencies, and even though you’ve lost something clearly meaningful to you because of a political funding reversal, you are nevertheless optimistic and passionate about the positive impact your sector and even our country as a whole could have on the world, if acting with sincere intent."

"I never quite thought of it that way, but yes, I suppose you’re right. I do still believe there’s a strong capacity for good." 

"And with all these interview engagements, you’re certainly not a shy speaker." 

"No no, that’s something I’ve never been accused of!"

"Well, perhaps before your eventual return to the development sector, you might consider public office. Maybe even the highest."

"What? Me? I’ve… never even really considered it."

"Something to think about, perhaps! A lot of people obviously find it worthwhile listening to you, and that certainly can’t be said of all politicians." 

"Definitely not."

"Thanks again for being on the show, Rey!"

* * *

It’s almost 4 o’clock by the time Ben notices his aides seem strangely nervous. Granted, he hasn’t been terribly perceptive today with his thoughts agonizingly occupied. But he finally clues in when it takes Paige a good five minutes to locate her notes from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting he’d sent her to on his behalf.

Her stuttered apology when she finally hands them to him mystifies him still further. Unlike Armitage, who’d been assigned to Ben following his Cabinet appointment, Paige had accompanied him through his transition from State.

“It’s fine, Paige.” Ben flips through the pages, noticing the uncharacteristically shaky handwriting. “Everything alright?”

She’s silent for such a long moment, Ben’s gaze lifts from the pages to find her in concern. She’s biting her lip, arms crossed tightly before her. 

“Actually…” she starts softly, then grows in confidence as she seems to reach some internal decision. She uncrosses her arms and looks up at Ben in full. “Actually. Mr. Solo, could I have a word in private?”

Surprised, Ben takes a hasty look around.

“Of course.”

He nods in the direction of his office and she follows him until the door is closed securely behind them.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, neither of them moving to sit.

Paige seems to debate word choice for a long moment before she speaks in a hushed tone.

“They told me not to tell you. But it just felt wrong, after everything you’ve done for me. This morning, Armitage and I were both… um, questioned. By someone from the FBI.”

“Excuse me? What for?”

“Well… for you. About you.”

Ben steps back until he lands in a chair in record time.

“Shit.”

* * *

Ben: _Can I see you tonight?_

When she sees the text from him, Rey remembers two things immediately: Being one with him, and the droplets on his face he’d tried to hide. 

It’s been two nights since their reunion; five days until the report will release. 

Rey: _Just tell me where._

* * *

Ben is on his third cigarette. While he waits for Rey at the hotel, he tries to think through every possible implication of his aides’ questioning.

He finally settles on what seems the most likely scenario: As the Special Counsel’s investigation narrows, the President probably started this undercover inquiry to assess and ameliorate his own level of risk. Ben doubts he was the sole target – probably one on a list of people in the political sphere who know something the President would rather them not. 

But after slowly learning the benefit to retention and manipulation, rather than outright sacking and expulsion, this may be the President’s method for gaining the upper hand through means of retaliation. Seize upon something to wield against Ben the same way Ben might potentially draw against him. 

Ben finds himself wondering if Paige’s loyalty had been anticipated. If the two-fold purpose of the investigation was also to reinstill authority, no matter what damning knowledge Ben carries. Assuming this was all undertaken under the President’s directive, his main goal may have been simply to remind Ben of his place – and the vastness of systems and powers arrayed against him, should Ben choose to defect. 

Perhaps the questioners anticipated Paige would divulge the truth to him, based on her multiple years working for him through various roles. Perhaps the primary purpose is the collection of intelligence to be levied against Ben should the need arise, with the peripheral aim of Ben being sufficiently cowed when word reaches back to him about such intelligence.

But just what kind of intelligence could possibly counter what Ben knows?

And will it even be necessary - if Ben’s knowledge never reaches the world?

Before Paige’s disclosure, he’d already been moored in uncertainty; effectively paralyzed from thinking about the choice confronting him in the grand scale terms it warranted. 

He’d long ago stopped seeing himself in the light of someone who might leave some impact. Lately, it had been all he could do just to reign in cataclysm - both inside himself and in the high stakes, self-sabotaging political game he’d become trapped in like some tiny insect caught in sap, its wings gummed up and helpless.

* * *

It’s barely 8 o’clock when Rey approaches the room and Ben’s increased security ask her for ID. Before, Rey would have been irritated. After the car bombing, now she wishes he had enough guards to fill the entire hallway.

Even still, another guard whose face is familiar to Rey rolls his eyes at his newly appointed superior.

“She’s really fine. They’ve been on-again, off-again for the past year.”

Rey gives an abrupt laugh. “Excuse me!”

The guard gives her a sheepish smile. “If I may be so bold as to give my personal opinion – You’re right about everything.”

Rey laughs again as she takes her ID back. “Tell him that, won’t you?”

After Rey’s gone inside and the door closes behind her, the senior guard newly assigned to Ben leans slyly towards his seasoned subordinate. 

“So who won’t commit?”

“Oh, she won’t. She hates his politics but seems to like him just enough to stick around. And judging by its… volume, apparently the sex is terrific.”

The senior guard sighs. “Lovely. _More_ melodrama.”

* * *

“Your security notice, you know.”

“Hm?”

Ben’s standing at the window - shirt unbuttoned, tie hanging loose as he smokes. At this point, Rey can’t keep track of how many hotel rooms have greeted her with this sight.

“Me, coming to meet you all the time. I think we’re quite the source of entertainment.”

Rey sheds her jacket and lets her bag slide to the floor. She comes to him at the window, arms sliding around his waist as she tips a kiss up to his cheek. 

She pulls back with her face scrunched up. 

“Put that out if you want me to kiss you sometime tonight.”

She watches one side of his mouth make the barest upward twitch as he reaches to stub out his cigarette and drop it in the ashtray on the windowsill. His other arm curls around Rey’s back as his chin comes to rest upon the top of her head. 

She doesn’t protest, even as his cigarette breath gets all in her hair.

“What do you say? When I come.”

“That you feel incredible?”

“ _Ben._ You know what I meant. What do you tell them?”

“I tell them… ‘Rey’s coming by tonight.’”

“Ah. The ambiguous ‘Rey’.”

Ben’s quiet for a long beat. Thinking. Weighing. Self-fortifying. His fingertips start tracing across Rey’s bare shoulder.

“Do you have another suggestion?”

“Hm? Oh, no. No, I suppose not.”

Rey lets her head rest all the way on his shoulder. 

“You looked distressed, when I came in. Were you thinking about the investigation?”

“Yes and no. Things have gotten a bit messy. I’ve told you about Paige, right?”

“The aide you brought over from State?”

“The same. She told me someone from the FBI questioned her today in confidence – about me.”

“What? What were they asking?" 

"How I speak about the President behind closed doors. Whether I might be the type to betray my country."

Rey snorts at the wording.

"Do you think it could be the special investigation stumbling onto the truth on their own?”

“No, they would have DOJ people sniffing around, or they’d subpoena me in the open. FBI interest has to be the President.”

“But… why? He knows perfectly well what you know. And you said he trusts you.”

“No amount of trust could be enough to guarantee his hold on power. I think it’s an intimidation tactic.”

Rey rolls back the next words before they escape her tongue. 

_Is it working?_

She reminds herself that something this immense has to be his choice. The repercussions will circle for the rest of his life, and he will have to live with his decision. 

That doesn’t sway Rey from a firm belief that only one of his choices is justifiable. It doesn’t stop her from believing he will strike onto the path she’ll gladly follow. 

The second path extending the opposite way; the one that would carry him away from her… It’s something she can hardly bear thinking on.

Her arms tighten around his midsection just slightly.

“Has anything been found about the car bomb?” 

She asks the question in a small voice that makes Ben tighten his hold around her shoulders. 

“So far, there’s no evidence that it was anything more than an act of partisan outrage by some fringe group. For now, everyone in the Cabinet’s stuck with extra security.”

“I’m glad they’re there,” Rey murmurs, turning her face a bit further into Ben’s shoulder.

In a disorienting realization, Rey swallows around the fact that whatever group would have wanted to attack the President – attack _Ben_ – likely did so out of beliefs not so far afield from her own. It had been someone on _her_ side of the aisle, who’d almost taken him from her. 

Ben’s fingers continue their slow patterns against the back of Rey’s shoulder. His gaze stretches out through the window, unseeing.

He muses to her aloud, “I didn’t get my personal phone back until the day after it happened, after you left. There were so many calls. Somehow I hadn’t even thought… I’ve hardly been able to talk to anyone in the last few months. Friends and old colleagues hadn’t heard from me in so long anyway.”

Ben pauses, his chin rubbing slowly back and forth against the top of Rey’s head. His next soft words drift out like an accident. 

“I talked to my parents for the first time in years.”

Rey’s breath catches. “ _Years?_ ”

“Mmhm. They live out on the west coast, where I grew up. But we fell out when I came to DC for my first tour with State. We hadn’t talked since.”

Caught off guard, Rey’s unable to make anything of his tone. It’s almost as if he’s speaking about someone else. Someone he hasn’t thought of in a very long time. 

“You haven’t missed them? No one ever tried reaching out?”

Rey feels Ben’s shoulder shift beneath her head in a slight shrug.

“I know I should have. But it’s hard to remember much more than our fights. Once I started at State, my life changed completely and moved so quickly. I lived overseas for years. There just never seemed time for… confronting all that. Maybe I was a coward for that, too.”

Rey frowns at the sound of the word from his tongue. She’s not sure how to parse it without breaking into larger, high-stakes topics, so she focuses on something more manageable. 

“How was it finally talking to them?”

“…strange. I remember them being overbearing. I remember chafing under all their pressures. I remember how they would fight. When I got into Harvard, part of the reason I was so glad was because it meant moving away. Afterwards, I burned bridges when I left for DC with the recklessness only a 21-year-old can have.”

A long moment of silence. Rey waits, sensing something more lodged in Ben’s chest, beneath where she’s pressed against him.

“My mom cried on the phone.”

“Oh, Ben,” Rey breathes, hiding her face close against his neck. One of her hands lifts to smooth soothing circles across his chest.

“They tried to ask how I’ve been doing, but it was hard after that.”

“I can only imagine. How relieved she must have been… How hard it was for that to be what you heard, after not hearing from her at all after so long.”

“It was nothing like I remembered her.”

“She probably thought the same. If she hasn’t seen you since your first tour… You’ve grown up into a man who’s surely so much different than what she remembers. So much _braver._ ”

Ben feels as if his throat has twisted into a knot. He closes his eyes against it, tipping his head down towards Rey’s hair. 

Several minutes pass of peaceful quiet. Eventually, Rey lets him take her weight completely, thankful but unsurprised by now when he doesn’t budge at all. His chin moves idly across the top of her head.

Rey waits for him to bring up the report and his decision. She wonders why he doesn’t.

When he does finally speak soft words to her, they are:

“I know we didn’t really get to talk about it the other night but… How have you been doing?”

Rey blinks for a moment, caught off guard.

“How am I doing? You mean… the whole unemployed thing?”

She feels him cringe against her slightly. Impossibly, his voice becomes softer still.

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

Rey shrugs just enough for him to feel.

“It’s not so bad, actually. I’ve been almost just as busy as a full-time job, doing all these interviews and speaking engagements. It’s still insane though, that I’m doing this stuff at all.”

“Not really.”

“What not really?”

“It’s not insane. That people are interested in hearing you.”

“I guess. I just didn’t mean for any of it to start.”

“Are you earning money from it?”

“The speaking engagements, yeah. Not a ton, but after working in the non-profit sector I know how to get by on little.”

Rey thinks back to NPR that morning. What the hell was she even _doing_ on NPR? She remembers the brief exchange towards the end about public office, and now it all seems even stranger.

“Hey, Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“When you’re in the Oval Office, do you ever think about… sitting in the chair yourself?”

Ben’s laugh is immediate, brief, and entirely disparaging.

“Fuck. Fuck, no. I’m not cut out for that. Not even a single part of that."

“What? You’re trying to tell me your ambition has a ceiling?”

“Ha-ha. When it comes to something that would likely leave me grey-haired and utterly demoralized, plus the fact that I’d be terrible, then yes, I do.”

Ben goes quiet again. Rey’s just beginning to doze against his chest when he says, “But you would be.”

“Mm. Sorry – I would be what?”

Rey gradually becomes aware that Ben has straightened up just enough to turn his gaze down towards her. She wakes up. 

He clarifies: “Cut out for that.”

Rolling her eyes, Rey moves to step away. “Please. Don’t mock me.”

Ben’s arm around her neither moves nor relaxes, and Rey has to stay in place.

“I’m not.” His words come out gentle but sure. “You’re resilient, driven, and unspeakably passionate.”

Rey keeps her eyes turned away as she parses his tone. When she fails to find anything but sincerity, she slowly lifts her head to meet his gaze. 

“And you’re not those things?”

“Nothing like the way you are.”

A moment of thought passes between them before Rey says with slowly fading skepticism, “You know what’s completely crazy? The interviewer this morning also asked me about public office.”

“They might have been onto something.”

“I don’t know. It’s still odd. And even though I’ve always encouraged you to change the system from within, part of me still wonders if it’s even possible – especially now, when the system seems so broken and corruption rampant.”

An eternity ago, Ben would have had an immediate retort. Now, neither of them are surprised that he doesn’t. 

But Rey is surprised by what she hears him whisper in a barely-there, trembling confession, long minutes later.

“I’m scared. Fucking terrified of what’s around the corner.”

Rey’s heart thumps to a higher tempo, her nerves pushing the edge. She doesn’t know if he can tell her – if he means some specific, highly classified threat hanging over their heads of which the entire US population remains blissfully unaware. 

Or if he means his own personal reckoning, and whatever may follow. 

Rey tightens her arms around him, when she feels how fragile he suddenly seems.

“You’ll do the right thing,” she says, her words only half soothing despite her best efforts. She simply can’t fight the slight edge of desperation and propulsion, when he’s _so close_ to…

Rey suddenly realizes Ben’s hands are shaking. Not just the minute trembling she’s felt against her own skin before, when they’re falling apart together. Not the way they shook when he pulled her into his arms after Uganda, as if her very existence were miraculous.

This is violent, like nothing she’s ever felt before. 

Ben emits a low curse when his entire arms collapse into the quaking. He seems to have trouble letting go of her, when Rey pulls back in concern. 

Her chest seizes in distress when she looks up. The back of her hand immediately follows her gaze to his face.

“Ben, you’re clammy. And so cold.”

Ben takes a shaky breath. He’s barely able to control the movements of his hands enough to gently take hers away.

“I’m okay. It’s nothing.”

“No, you look… really ill.”

“Really, I’m fine. I-I just…”

He pulls away from her the whole way, putting his hands behind his back in a futile attempt to hide the shaking.

“I’ll just put some water on my face.”

He turns and disappears into the bathroom, closing himself in. 

Alone at the window, Rey chews her bottom lip as she closes her arms around herself. 

She hates this feeling of helplessness more than anything. How she suddenly feels compressed small and poked through with holes. One-dimensional. Hates the way she feels compelled to her very core towards a door that’s closed – towards someone who, for whatever reason, told her something other than the truth. 

Most of all, she hates the fear that’s expanding in her with each passing minute – that’s not her own, and yet somehow seems like one of the worst things she’s ever felt. 

It presses against her throat until she can barely breathe. 

She can’t stand still. She’s nearly at the bathroom door before her voice works. 

“Ben, should we call someone? I’m worried about-”

Her hand lands on the doorknob and turns and the door starts to swing inward. A heartbeat later – all the time it takes for everything to change – it’s open, and at the sink, Ben’s scrambling to stand from where he’d been kneeling.

Rey freezes. Her eyes are drawn towards where his hand is frantically brushing something from the counter. Trying to disperse the remnants of white powder.

But Rey saw, and the world is cracking into two jagged, ugly pieces around her. Her expression blank in its stupor, her gaze travels slowly to Ben. 

He’s watching her with wild horror and dismay bleeding out across his face. But Rey can only see the smudge of white still smeared at his nose.

The world around Rey careens and smashes to a hideous halt.

Underneath her, Rey’s feet automatically move her away from him. She backs up, expression still stunned, until her knees hit the back of the bed. She falls back onto it, scrambles across, until her feet find floor on the opposite side. She keeps moving until her back hits the far wall of the room. She flattens herself against it, her hands pressing back against the wallpaper. 

Her thoughts are blaring. There’s a deafening uproar inside her, and she can make sense of none of it.

Across miles of space, Ben takes small, halting steps out of the bathroom. He’s holding his hands up and empty in the air before him, as if Rey were a spooked animal he could soothe into trusting him again. 

“Never,” Rey chokes out, her mind and her mouth not fully connecting.

From her far corner, Rey can see the heavy, strained motion of his throat as he struggles to swallow. Struggles to breathe.

She sees the way his hands aren’t shaking anymore. 

Understanding has never brought with it such wreckage.

“I’m getting better. I swear.”

His voice sounds like knives – ripped from his mouth and lodging in Rey’s chest. 

She doesn’t think it matters what he says. 

“The withdrawal was because I haven’t… For three days now…”

“How long?” Rey breathes, her chest heaving in silent shocks. 

“Not the whole time. I promise you.”

“ _How long?_ ”

Ben takes a deep breath, his abhorrence for the words in his own mouth worse than even the night sweats and the vomiting and everything in the last three days. She’d come back into his life and he’d sworn to himself she would never know. He would never touch the shit again so long as he had her and why, _why_ couldn’t he be strong for once in his God forsaken life…

“Since we stopped talking, after the aid cuts.”

A manic, deriding laugh rips from Rey’s chest, like something possessing her. 

“So you’re going to stand there and say it’s _my_ fault. Like I drove you to this…”

“No! God, Rey, of course not. You have to believe me when I say I’ve never been more ashamed of anything in my life.”

“I do believe you. And it’s still not enough. Not nearly.”

The roaring in Rey’s ears finally begins to recede. In its place, Rey slowly starts to process the stinging emptiness rushing in through all five of her senses. 

It takes a long time for her words to collect. On the other side of the bed, Ben stands still frozen in place. His lips tremble around half-formed, begging words. He speaks none of them, just waiting for her to finally unleash rightful fury upon him. 

He knows he has no means of defense, nor does he deserve any. But if he waits until he’s absorbed the brunt of her scorn, perhaps he might have just enough strength left to plead with her not to go. Because without her, there will be none of him left at all.

The scorn doesn’t come. Instead, it’s something much worse.

Rey struggles to string sounds together into words. It’s almost too difficult to look at him, and yet she can look nowhere else. At his mussed hair, his tie still hanging loose around his neck, his dress shirt open to reveal where she would have slept, if this night had gone differently.

She takes a deep breath. She realizes with distant shock that she’s not angry. 

Just empty. Emptiness that singes like heartbreak.

“How could you?” Rey whispers, watching each word visibly strike him. “You have everything. You have the influence to make a positive difference in the world and you just… You fucking squander every last bit of it.”

“Rey,” his voice cracks open, almost bleeding, but he makes himself press on. “I have _nothing._ I haven’t achieved or built a goddamn thing in my life.”

“How can you say that?” Rey’s voice breaks now too. “You made it to a position almost everyone in this city would kill for. And you stand there saying everything you’ve accumulated in your whole life means nothing – like it comes with no responsibility or awareness at all of those you walked over to get here.”

Rey has to choke back tears, when they begin to threaten her. She thinks distantly of how people don’t really cry when they’re sad, but when they’re frustrated. When the frustration is just too much to contain in one body.

“You call it _nothing_ , when this entire country looks to you – its _self-interested_ leaders - praying that you might think for one goddamn second in your lives about the people at the bottom. About something other than the kickbacks of the status quo.” 

Somehow, Rey’s voice remains mostly steady, even as the tears begin to fall.

“And it means nothing to you. Everything good in this world that should be protected and fought for. Instead you just – just coke yourself out and make excuses.”

Ben says nothing. He makes no attempt to maintain any defense at all. 

With twisted, masochistic self-sadism, he swallows each of her words into himself. Even after poisoning himself with cigarettes, then drugs, none of it compares to the conflagration each of them ignites just beneath his heart. In a fit of addiction, his body gulps that down too.

Looking across the room, into Rey’s red eyes, he understands why it evokes her contempt. 

Before her eyes, Rey’s mind is spooling through everything that led them to this moment. Everything that led her here, to this point where there’s nothing more to be said on his behalf; when there’s nothing more she can do. 

In hurried flashes, she picks apart all the nights together. Every argument, each kiss, every last time he made her smile. Every bit of heartache, gathering in droplets until this moment of flood that washes away every last structure and foundation.

After living it all – even living _this_ – Rey finds with insistent, even if foolhardy, clarity that she still cannot think she was wrong. Perhaps that would make this easier, if she simply had to accept that the things she loves in him never existed at all. But she knows they do. She’s _seen them._ And it makes this all so much worse – the fallout so much more crushing. 

Even to the end, he refuses to see what she sees. To the point when even cowards would be ashamed; Ben would rather destroy the man he could be, than take the weight of that man’s decisions on his own shoulders and the strength to shape destinies in his own hands.

Minutes pass. The temperature in the air between them drops still further, and Ben tries to make what even he knows is a paltry appeal.

“I don’t think I can… I can’t be the man you think I am.”

That makes enough pieces of Rey’s mind click back together into working order. She straightens where she stands. She ignores the panic that erupts on Ben’s face when she begins moving towards the door.

“You are exactly the man I thought you were.” 

That makes Ben freeze again as his expression crumples to dust. Before tonight, Rey never knew words could deliver such blows. At this moment, she’s glad of it. Glad of the power she wields. She clings to it as her last lifeline.

“I told you that you’re a good man, and I believed it. I still do. But it means nothing, until the day you do too.”

Rey takes a deep breath, centering herself in a conviction she’s slowly but surely struggling to rebuild from rubble and debris.

“I believed in you,” she says, her voice hard. “And I’m not - I’m not a naïve or foolish person. You said you think you’ve never created a single thing. Well, you’re wrong. But this? _This_ is the worst kind of destruction. The worst you could ever do.”

Rey hurriedly swipes the back of her hands across her eyes. She smears the tears more than cleans them away, but she bends down without pause to pick up her jacket and then her bag and hitch it back over her shoulder again. 

The bag with clothes for the next day. Make up. Her shampoo and moisturizer. None of which were touched tonight, much less unpacked. 

As she straightens, her eyes seek Ben’s and lock in. Her vision is swimming slightly – just enough that she can’t quite see the details of devastation on his face. It doesn’t matter. 

Her feet can already feel the few steps to the door. They could bring her there in a single burst of motion. Her final words burst out first. The tiny bit of warble is belied by their indignation.

“There were moments, Ben. When I saw so much more to you. When I thought I was falling in love with you.”

She reaches for the door blindly, her sight blurring as she forcibly drags it away from him. 

“They’ll break my heart forever.”

Rey turns. Her shoulders are tall and strong, unshaking as she leaves. 

Past the guards, past the pattern of odd-even-odd-even numbers down the hallway (Rey numbly counts the numbers just for something _anything_ to distract her), past the giant vase holding one-two-three-four palm leaves, past pushing the elevator button and waiting, waiting, waiting all the way from Floor 23, only then does it all begin to crest over her. 

She steps inside and stands ramrod still in the very middle of the elevator as the doors close. For a single minute that feels like eternity, she lets the tears coarse silently down her face. Her expression remains frozen – her chin stiff and her eyes scrambling to blink the salt away. 

She sniffs once, violently. Breath punches out from her ribcage. 

Rey reaches to press the button for Lobby with a painstakingly gentle touch.

* * *

The door closes behind her. The silence roars in decibels Ben cannot comprehend.

_You are exactly the man I thought you were._

Her tone had been withering, but her expression had been something else entirely. Not anger, not even derision. No, the shimmering in her eyes had spoken of loss.

_I thought I was falling in love with you._

Ben’s hands start shaking again, this time for a completely different reason. His eyes sting. 

He’d meant it when he swore to himself he would kick the habit. But not knowing what else to do in a moment of panic when she noticed the cold pallor to him, he’d thought just a single sniff would keep it all at bay while she was here. Just one. 

And just one had been enough to shatter everything. 

_This is the worst kind of destruction._

He feels it now – worse than ever before. This is beyond withdrawal. This is oblivion. 

Her face won’t dissipate. It wasn’t disappointment or a sinking, fading hope there; It had been active, crumbling demolition. Before his very eyes tonight, he had broken the most precious thing he never realized he owned. It hadn’t been some intangible, distant dream of hers he’d razed. He had broken something concrete and finite within her. Something as sure as his own existence.

Only in losing her faith does he realize it existed all along. Another thing he took for granted. 

It wasn’t the man he might have been who broke her heart. It was the man he is now. He is the one she’d believed in, and he is the one who had remained blind and indolent when it mattered most. 

This is sickening power he never, ever wanted – to make her cry like this.

Only barely aware of his movements, Ben lurches towards the desk in the corner of the room. His vision pulses red as his blood roars with the force of self-loathing. But his consciousness crashes back to his body a second before the chair leaves his hands. 

In a startling, blessed moment of clarity, he sees the room from outside himself. He sees himself hefting the chair in mid-air, a second before he sends it hurtling. 

For what? What good would one more broken thing be?

Rey is gone. 

Somehow in the empty, in every one of her words still reverberating inside him, he reaches some inkling of clarity. 

There are five days until the report on election interference and the President’s potential role will be released. Depending on its conclusions, it might shake the entire country. No one knows what Ben knows; nor does anyone know Ben knows it. 

If Ben never comes forward, no one would know but the man he’s effectively protecting; the same man trying to keep him silent.

No one would know except for Rey.

Except for himself.

_You fucking squander every bit of it._

No one can do what he can. Until now, he thought not even he could. But now, in the crushing silence of a room they should have shared; in the echo of her final words of departure, he realizes the man Rey kept asking so much of is standing right here in his own shoes.

He’d thought there would be none of him left, without her. But that can’t be true. There must be something – something that once won her faith. Something he can use.

Ben sets the chair back down on the floor. He goes to his own bag, lifts it onto the bed, and rifles through all the way to the bottom. He pulls out one, two, three baggies of the cowardice he has no more excuses for. 

He goes to the bathroom. Over the toilet, he opens each one and tips them upside down. He ignores the repellant way his body seizes at the sight. 

Ben returns to the bedroom. He picks up the phone with the number used by his aides. 

He sits back on the edge of the bed as the line rings. He knows it’s almost 11, but it’s the first time in months he’s called after hours. 

After eight long rings, the call is answered with, “Yes, Mr. Solo?”

“Paige. Sorry to call after hours, but I’m going to need a high priority meeting tomorrow. It will have to be strictly discreet.”

_You are exactly the man I thought you were._

Ben sits up just a bit straighter on the bed.

He will prove her right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every word of [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXH4Z3U4H50&pbjreload=10), literally every word and every note, is Ben in this chapter. This song, "By My Side" is the perfect, if kind of heartbreaking, follow up to ["By Your Side"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBVYN9pjk0) \- last chapter's soundscape.
> 
> ...aaand here we go, hurtling towards the final chapters. I think the final chapter count around 13 or 14 should be pretty accurate. What's really been the greatest challenge for me is how to handle Ben in these chapters. I've had certain obstacles in mind that I wanted to build up for him - here, the drug addiction and his internal conflicting ideals all coming to an explosive head. They reinforced each other in the worst ways. But he and Rey both evolved into more three-dimensional people the more I wrote them, so this chapter posed the challenge of marrying my core plot ideas with the new life these characters have taken on. That, and I really wanted to pull this chapter off without making everyone hate/stop caring about him :''')
> 
> Please assuage my angsting and tell me what you thought! I'm going on vacation next week so the next update may not be posted until afterwards, but all your comments will be so helpful to throw in the mix while my brain gets all that time to stew over the ending!
> 
> More feels on [my tumblr!](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/)


	11. Give Yourself A Try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mr. Solo, our focus of discussion today is a meeting efforts have been made to hide, which took place on January 21st, 2017. Do you have knowledge of this aforementioned meeting?”
> 
> “I do.”
> 
> “Knowledge of what nature?”
> 
> “First-hand.”
> 
> “Is it your testimony today that you were present at the meeting in question?”
> 
> “Yes, Counselor. It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter was a MONSTER to write. We jump around a bit more than usual, and making certain sections realistic with the right type of language and fact-checking to make it plausible was really a challenge. I only hope it all comes off alright!
> 
> But guys. GUYS. Can you even believe Adam's out there delivering these Senate staffer Looks in the Report trailer? I feel like he did it just for me and this fic and I frankly can't believe I'm so blessed. I watched that trailer and beyond my excitement for the movie itself about an issue I have PLENTY of thoughts about, I couldn't help getting a bit overly excited like "omg omg it's DC!Ben IT'S MY BEN IT'S HIM!" And because I couldn't help taking full advantage of this incredibly fortuitously-timed trailer, prepare for some random graphics in text :)
> 
> As always, [credit for the song title!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

Fox News picks up the story first. It’s all over the airwaves within the hour. 

_Special Counsel’s Last-Minute Witness Will Testify Live_

Rey has spent the days since she left Ben in the hotel room at her friend Rose’s apartment. Rey refuses to divulge who or what or why; seeking distractions and the occasional wordless, lingering embrace when the tears creep up. 

She’s been avoiding the news at all costs – unable to watch the countdown until the report’s release without any new developments. 

But this she can’t avoid.

Rey’s just about to leave the room as Rose clicks on the TV, when her feet immediately seal to the floor like cement.

“No details are known yet about the identity of the witness or which area of the inquiry the testimony will concern. At this point, all that’s been announced by the Special Counsel’s office is that the witness volunteered his testimony two days ago, and rather than holding behind-doors hearings, the public session was immediately scheduled.

“Legal experts speculate the reason may be a high-profile witness whose information could be critical to the public perception of the investigation prior to the report’s release, and whose testimony is expected to be made in good faith cooperation with the questioners. Judicial independence and witness safety have also been considered.”

Rey sinks down onto the nearest chair, losing all touch with the world around her. 

“ _Ben_ ,” she breathes, even her vision refusing to focus as she sinks under a swell of protective anxiety. 

The relief is there, but deep. It’s tangled with a tiny warm touch of pride. But there’s just too much on top of it – too much blotting it out. The reality of what he’s going to reveal hits Rey anew with ten times the weight. It didn’t seem quite so towering, when he confessed it in guileless words meant only for her. 

It was so much simpler, when it seemed only the abstract _right thing to do._

“What did you say, Rey?” Rose comes to perch on the arm of the chair. She frowns when she sees the tension in Rey’s face. “Are you okay?”

Rey takes a deep breath; tries to corral the chaos in her mind back into order. 

_It’s right. The right thing to do._

_Even though it will demand so much of him._

Rey musters a smile. “I’m fine.”

Her friend looks back to the TV, as legal speculators continue.

“Think this is going to amount to anything?” her friend asks. 

In her lap, Rey’s fingers are fighting each other. 

“I have a feeling it will. It might even be huge.”

For a dizzying half second, she wants to seize her phone and tell him not to. She ruthlessly stifles the twitch. Not only is this what she has always asked of him, what she knew lived somewhere within him, but she knows it’s a million times bigger than them. 

Than her and him – together. Even with how immense it all felt, in those moments that expanded to render every good or bad thing to happen in the world – every good or bad thing either of them had ever done – completely inconsequential.

_You belong here._

_I’m here, Rey. I’m here with you._

Deep, deep down in her chest, Rey knows this isn’t about her. It can’t be. Ben’s staring the crossroads straight in the face. The road that brought him here, the one that’s kicked up mud and filth to cover him with every step, is falling behind him. 

_I haven’t achieved or built a goddamn thing in my life._

Rey knew that wasn’t true. Maybe now he’s finally realizing it too. Tomorrow, the whole country will know. Rey just hopes the world will be a better place for it. 

Without saying anything, Rey reaches for her friend’s hand. Her grip is returned, but the fingers are just too slim. Not warm enough. 

There are a hundred reasons why she can’t text him anything at all. Even to say it will all be okay. 

The loudest reason is what frightens Rey the most: She doesn’t know. 

Much has gone askew with her worldview, since she met Ben. She has no space for resentment now – only for the true, bitter cost of resistance she’s never truly tasted until now.

* * *

Ben is sick all night. His body aches for poison he refuses to give it. When he arrived home after Rey found out, he made sure all of it was gone from his house too. 

Even over the sound of retching, Ben can _sense_ the furious barrage of calls to all of his phones. All the ones switched off and facedown. He’d asked that his identity be kept in strict confidence before the examination, though he knows it won’t be much help. The President would exhaust all desperate measures to target the new witness who’s a mystery to everyone but him.

The Department of Justice had discreetly added guards of their own to Ben’s security and instructed him to stay at home until the hearing. As a matter of judicial independence, both his new and old guards had been mandated not to permit any member of the Cabinet to have contact with Ben – even if the President himself pulled up. 

Fortunately, he hasn’t yet. 

Hours ago, Ben stopped fretting about what leverage might have been gathered against him through the FBI questioning. In the unprecedented face of what he’s about to do – knowing the eyes of the entire country will be on him short hours from now, he finds himself distantly unaffected. It doesn’t feel like bravery; whatever anxiety might have tried to claim him simply feels small in the face of something colossal. 

As Ben clambers into bed at 3 AM, hoping he might be able to steal twenty minutes of rest before the next wave hits, he wonders just how much like death he’ll look on national TV the next day. 

Back in the bathroom a mere ten minutes later, the shaking is half physical deterioration and half mental taxation. 

Tomorrow, he might bring down a lot more than just one man. Again, the same torturous questions chase through his head. 

_What right does he have? Will this just make everything worse? Is this just one more bout of destruction? How terrible will the public outcry by? What chaos will follow?_

He hasn’t eaten, so it’s only heaving that silences his foreboding. When he collapses back into bed, his head stays blessedly silent. 

There are no answers – just acceptance of the unknown. 

Nothing like this has ever happened before. The integrity of not only the American electoral process, but the very functioning of the governmental system at large has never stood to be shown so undermined. Everything will be different for it. 

He tries, _tries_ to tell himself the silence is resolution.

* * *

Rey goes home the next day to watch. After days of wanting anything but solitude, she knows she’ll need it for this. An hour before the hearing starts, her heart’s already chasing a frenetic beat in her chest.

Rey has no idea how she’s going to get through this. 

She has even less how _Ben_ will.

* * *

Cameras crowd in from every angle when the train of official black vehicles pulls up to the Department of Justice building. In a crazed frenzy, the camera men don’t know whether Ben Solo is who they should be filming, when he gets out of one of the SUVs towards the back of the caravan. They get an idea that he is, when he’s bustled inside in seconds by a dozen security guards. He keeps his head low, unresponsive to shouts of his name.

In a circular hearing room inside, the broadcast begins promptly. At first, the witness table is empty. Sitting at the raised desks lining the far wall – a platoon of cameras set up before them – the Special Counsel and three DOJ attorneys assisting in the examination preface the proceedings. 

“This session has been convened today to gather evidence regarding a specific incident, which has been determined as crucial to the conclusions of this investigation. This incident was a meeting on January 21st, 2017. Before today, our investigation had been unable to ascertain any information as to the participants, purpose, or location of this meeting. What seemed the purposeful destruction of all records of this meeting alone warranted investigation. Efforts to locate any information revealed only the likelihood that a foreign agent was in attendance – through examination of visa logs and cross-comparison to other diplomatic events which took place in the Department of State building on the same day.

This week, our Counsel were contacted by an individual who claimed to have been present at the meeting in question. Full questioning will first take place today in this public forum, given the urgent nature of the testimony and the upcoming due date of this body’s final report to the American public.”

The Special Counsel clears his throat once the attorney to his left concludes. The room is packed – press and half of the Department of Justice building crowded into the audience gallery. Yet, it’s completely silent – the tension in the room thickening by the second. Expectant, questioning eyes dart around the room seeking the mystery witness. 

“This body calls Ben Solo, acting Foreign Policy Advisor to the President, to the stand.”

Murmuring erupts in every corner as a side door opens and Ben enters. Accompanied by security guards before and behind him, he approaches the empty witness table. 

He stands beside the table for a moment, while security guards usher the media back to their assigned spaces. Exploding flashbulbs and camera shutters loud as gunshots fill the room. Ben looks only at the witness table – an isolated thing marooned in the center of the packed room. 

Fingers moving mechanically, he unbuttons his suit jacket before he sits. He folds his hands before him, sitting straight and looking only up towards the questioners, expression perfectly impassive as the press cameras take full advantage of their allotted thirty seconds of flash photos. 

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/181686886@N04/48651475591/in/dateposted-public/)

He’s dressed in a crisp blue suit, a grey and white tie at his neck. There are no papers, folders, or notepads before him. He’ll speak only extemporaneously from his own memory.

Once the press subside and the room again settles down into quiet, the Special Counsel sits forward at the podium. 

“Mr. Solo, thank you for joining us today. Can you confirm for the record of these proceedings how you became identified as a witness for this investigation?”

Ben clears his throat. He smooths his tie with one hand while his other pulls the microphone on the table a few inches closer.

“Certainly. I came to be a witness after contacting your office of my own volition. I did so because I believed my testimony could prove to be of material benefit to this investigation.”

One of the DOJ attorneys notes, “Let the record reflect Mr. Solo appears before this body as a volunteer witness. He will therefore be treated as a non-hostile witness and will be granted immunity, should any criminal charges be recommended against either the President’s campaign or Cabinet staff in this body’s final report.”

The Special Counsel resumes, “Mr. Solo, our focus of discussion today is a meeting efforts have been made to hide, which took place on January 21st, 2017. Do you have knowledge of this aforementioned meeting?”

“I do.”

“Knowledge of what nature?”

“First-hand.”

“Is it your testimony today that you were present at the meeting in question?”

“Yes, Counselor. It is.”

“Mr. Solo, could you tell us who else was present in this meeting?”

Ben pauses. He methodically lays his palms on the tabletop before him as he wets his lips. 

“Yes, I can. There were three people present at the January 21st meeting. They were myself, the President, and a Russian national named Sevastien Skolov.”

“For the sake of clarity, could you state for the record what your position was at the time of the meeting?”

“I was Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the Department of State.”

“So you were not yet a member of the President’s cabinet?”

“No, I was not.”

“Then how and why did you become aware of this meeting?”

“I was contacted by the President shortly after his inauguration to arrange the meeting.”

“Were you contacted personally?”

“Initially, no. The President first contacted the Secretary of State, requesting to be put in touch with senior staff at State with access to a robust network of contacts in Moscow. After my previous position as International Organizations Secretary, I had developed those contacts through Security Council and G20 meetings, and so the Secretary of State connected him to me.”

“So no one else had knowledge of this request, other than you?”

“No. Even the Secretary of State had not been told of the meeting’s purpose.”

“What was the intended purpose of the meeting as requested by the President?”

Ben takes a long moment. His gaze lowers to the aged tabletop, smooth beneath his fingers. He takes his time folding his hands together again, his eyes set on the polished wood beneath his hands. 

The wood of a table that has likely stood sentinel in this building for decades and decades – outliving everyone who’s ever sat here to testify; every Attorney General who ever called witnesses before it. Its weathered and yet ageless surface answers to no man who claims the livery of power.

“The President asked that I arrange a meeting with a Russian operative matching a certain profile. He wanted someone with direct access to Kremlin intelligence and finance lines, but no one known in the official diplomatic sphere. I had several potential contacts to suggest, and spoke with the President over the phone to identify the best match.”

“Could you tell us about the contact who attended the eventual meeting?”

“Mr. Skolov has been an undercover conduit for arms deals both in and out of Russia. He became known to me when Moscow made covert arms shipments into Syria and Kurdistan. When discussed in Security Council sessions, these shipments were always denied. Our efforts to trace the transactions often led through Mr. Skolov’s various accounts in Swiss banks. The accounts are all under his own name, and he has no official ties to the Kremlin. However, vast amounts of both Syrian and Saudi funds were tracked moving through his accounts, before being routed towards Moscow.” 

“Why did the President choose Mr. Skolov to attend this meeting?”

Ben’s gaze lifts towards the ceiling as his jaw visibly tightens. His expression remains stony, even as anticipatory whispers snake through the chamber. 

His right hand begins to quake on the tabletop, before he folds his hands together again and firmly covers it with his left. His eyes lower to find the Special Counsel again. 

“The President needed to fulfill his part of a deal that had been made between his campaign staff and Kremlin contacts accessed through Jared Kushner. The deal included coordinated and targeted attacks by Russian hackers to breach the Democratic National Convention’s email server, to provide Wikileaks classified documents from Hillary Clinton’s email cache, and finally to scramble votes on election day.”

Ben is cut off by the rising noise level in the chamber. His lips seal shut as he waits it out, expression still shuttered and focused. After ten seconds without a return to silence, one of the DOJ attorneys knocks a gavel against the wood podium. Finally, quiet resumes. 

And so does Ben.

“Once in office, the President’s part of the deal was to establish lines of laundered profit from a mix of lucrative American assets - ranging from his own privately-owned hotels and casinos, to stock dividends in high-performing US sectors, to yields from US government bonds. These lines were to be engineered and overseen by Mr. Skolov as untraceable, with the guarantee that these funds would eventually reach Moscow. In the January 21st meeting, terms were discussed for these accounts to remain active for at least four years. The President promised a rate of yearly compensation of at least some hundred million dollars.”

The chamber bursts into furor. Appearing to have expected no less, Ben’s only visible response is a further tightening along his jaw that must incite pain. He sits back in his seat, gaze focused on some indistinct point behind his questioner’s head. His mouth remains in a rigidly firm line as several intelligible shouts are thrown above the cacophony. 

“He’s a liar!”

“Saving his own skin!”

The gavel bangs again as the Special Prosecutor glares out into the crowd, radiating disapproval. 

One of the DOJ attorneys calls “Order! Order!” until the din gradually ebbs. In the tense minute it takes for the noise to recede, Ben moves his hands beneath the table to obscure the resurgent bout of shaking from the cameras’ line of sight.

“Mr. Solo.” The Special Counsel addresses him again with a barely palpable touch of empathy in his voice. “Were you briefed by the President on the details of this proposed deal prior to the meeting?”

“Only to the extent necessary for me to contact Mr. Skolov through my networks and explain the proposed meeting’s purpose in a general sense. The rest I learned during the meeting.”

“Where exactly was the meeting held?”

“At the President’s DC hotel. Mr. Skolov checked in as a guest on personal travel two days before.”

“Where in the hotel did the meeting take place?”

“In Skolov’s room. Room 62.”

“And you were present for the entirety of the discussions?”

“Yes. I was to be Mr. Skolov’s contact, should any problems or leaks arise.”

“Did you have any further contact with Mr. Skolov?”

“No. He never contacted me after that meeting, nor did I reach out to him.”

“And were all aspects of this proposed deal realized?”

“To the best of my knowledge, yes. Skolov’s operations are exceedingly difficult to trace, and clearly I could not enlist CIA help in monitoring.”

“Was this deal ever discussed outside of that room again?”

“Once – In private with the President shortly after I was appointed to my current position.”

“Speaking of your current appointment, Mr. Solo, when did you accept the Cabinet position?”

“April of 2017.”

“Was your appointment ever discussed at any point prior to that?”

“No, it was not.”

“It was never part of discussions surrounding either the January 21st meeting, or the deal that meeting concerned?”

“No, Counselor, it was not.”

The Special Counsel pauses, looking down at the notebooks and papers stacked before him. The attorney to his right slides additional files in his direction. 

When the man looks up at Ben again, he folds his arms on the desk before him and leans forward. 

“Mr. Solo, we have one final question for you.”

“Of course.”

“Why did you choose to come forward now?”

Ben sits arrested in place for a long moment. The chamber remains quiet this time as Ben considers, his expression flickering in only the slightest trace.

Finally, he lifts his hands from his lap to draw the microphone half an inch closer. 

“First: Practicality. If not part of an active investigation such as this one, which would immediately recognize the bearing of what I witnessed, this information would only create noise. It would be unlikely to serve any worthwhile purpose.

“Second…” Ben pauses again. His gaze drops to the tabletop for a moment as he appears to gather strength. Yet, for every sign that he might have been fortifying himself for something bold, his voice sounds in tones softer when it resumes. 

“Second: Because I received a much-needed reminder that we are meant to serve the American people, not ourselves. It’s time this Administration remembered that. And time for me to confront my own failings in that regard, and redress the role I have played.”

Ben receives a slight nod from the Counsel. 

“Thank you for your testimony today, Mr. Solo.”

Security surrounds Ben only seconds before the press leap towards him. Ben is guided from the clamoring chaos of the hearing room by a tight circle of security that clear the path towards the door he entered from.

A guard keeps his hand on Ben’s shoulder when the group emerges into the sight of cameras held aloft by a thick mass of people at the building’s entrance. 

“Clear the way!” another guard barks as Ben is swiftly shuttled towards his waiting car. 

Shouts and jeers and questions rain down from every side. Cameraman press in with desperation. 

The second the door is closed behind him, Ben’s car pulls away.

* * *

Watching the live broadcast, Rey physically moves from the couch to the floor, closer to her TV screen when Ben enters the hearing room. 

Perhaps someone who doesn’t know him as well wouldn’t have noticed, but Rey can only see how his face looks gaunt and even paler than usual. There are shadows under his eyes. 

Rey watches the moment he stops beside the witness table before he takes his seat. His expression barely flickers, and yet she can see him struggling with the gravity of what will happen once he goes through with this; what he’s about to let loose in the world. 

And still, a moment later he takes the seat in one fluid motion, his shoulders straight and wide as ever. 

Rey wraps her arms around her knees, hugging them close as she watches every second, every detail in Ben’s face as the cameras zoom on him. 

The more grievous his testimony becomes, the closer the angles tighten.

When he pauses for short, torturous stretches before he forces himself into the most difficult admissions, Rey sees the way his hands begin to shake against the tabletop. 

She covers her mouth with her hands. She remembers all too well how his fingers shook against her skin, before everything fell to pieces. She remembers him admitting to withdrawal. If he’s shaking now, it must be because he hasn’t used since she last saw him. 

Watching him sit poised at the center of that crowded chamber, every eye and camera fixed on him as he folds his trembling hands together to hide them, Rey feels incoherent guilt and unyielding tenderness.

She wavers towards a mournful smile only once, when Ben recalls “Room 62.”

“Perfect memory for numbers,” Rey murmurs to herself.

As the hearing draws towards its end, the protracted, tense silence after “Why did you choose to come forward now?” makes Rey lean closer to the TV. It makes her fingers itch to smooth the harsh lines from Ben’s face.

_“Because I received a much-needed reminder that we are meant to serve the American people, not ourselves. It’s time this Administration remembered that.”_

Rey’s chest ignites in inchoate fervor as Addis and everything since then sweeps over her all at once.

* * *

Minutes after the broadcast concludes, the President takes to Twitter to launch a smear counter campaign.

_How tragic to see a trusted advisor fall victim to the witch hunt. But can’t say I’m surprised, considering Solo’s been courted to make up stories for the deep state Dems by so-called “activists” dedicated to undermining my Cabinet._

Beneath the tweet, the clearest of the discovered photos is released. 

Standing only inches from each other, Ben Solo and Rey Johnson’s side profiles are instantly recognizable. The back room of the Hamilton is dimly lit, but the intensity of their focus on each other speaks some language of heat. Ben’s arm is noticeably raised, as if either extending towards or retracting from Rey’s skin. 

_If that’s the kind of company he keeps, the only thing we should be investigating is an act of sedition!_

* * *

Rey stares numbly at the TV screen after the broadcast ends; still trying to process everything that just played out before her and still more - to make some sense of the inscrutable, indefinable maelstrom within her. 

It’s worse than she could have imagined. Ben had indeed confessed the same truth to her already, but the simplified version he’d admitted in hushed, defeated tones for her ears alone had held so little of this cold cataclysm. 

She didn’t truly understand the stakes. Now, after watching Ben speak the undisguised truth in measured, ruinous words before the eyes of the entire country, she is just beginning to.

She wishes it were relief – the pounding of her pulse and the wild ringing filling her ears. But it’s something nearer to panic.

How foolish she’d been to think this would be the most difficult part, when it’s all only just beginning. 

Rey jumps when her phone chimes. Moving in a daze, Rey slowly takes in Rose’s name on the screen before she answers. 

“Did you watch?” Rey asks, voice faint and wavering.

“Of course I did! But did you see Twitter? It’ll be all over the news within the hour but Rey, I can’t believe you. I can’t… I’m in complete disbelief right now. And that you didn’t tell me!”

Rey closes her eyes, making an effort to focus on understanding what it is her friend’s saying. Her thoughts are still moving so slowly and with such pain. Her phone starts buzzing again in her hand as messages suddenly barrage her inbox.

“I- what? What’s on Twitter?”

“Oh. Rey. … Check it. Go check right now.”

Rey lowers her phone and pulls up Twitter. In the seconds it takes to load, notifications flood in. The first she reads from one of her old coworkers makes her breath freeze. 

_You’re really fucking Ben Solo?!_

Rey’s fingers shake as she swipes all the notifications away. Finally, she can place exactly what she’s feeling. It’s terror welling up in her as her Twitter feed updates.

She has hundreds of notifications. Countless tags and retweets of the same post.

A post by the President of the United States, unleashing her relationship with Ben as the next national headline. This, on a day already historic for all the wrong reasons. 

Rey can’t stop staring at the words, despite the loathing that grows to roil within her each time her eyes skim across the screen.

Rey doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to put adequate words to the chaotic, consuming expanse of what she feels for Ben. And yet, someone has stolen it from her in the most superficial sense. Someone has cut its shimmering edges, gentle craters, and mercurial shadows down to the crudest shape, exploiting it against them both.

There are innumerable things Rey would do for Ben. Making him a liar will never be one of them. 

A searing, raging tremor grows and spreads throughout Rey’s body. 

On this of all days. When Ben finally put all the lies to an end.

* * *

Ben sits in the wide backseat of the black, nondescript SUV – one guard up with the driver and another in the back with him. He’s frozen, silent and motionless almost the whole way through DC traffic. Not until the car is just about to turn onto one of the bridges towards Virginia, do Ben’s senses slowly filter back into focus enough for him to become aware of the frantic buzzing of a cellphone in his innermost breast pocket. 

His personal phone. The only number not shared with colleagues in the Cabinet or at State. The only number that’s safe anymore.

His fingers numb, everything seeming to take a very long time, he withdraws the phone. It continues to buzz in his hand. 

He stares at the screen for a moment that seems endless. 

It’s difficult, for him to think about the broader implications of what he’s seeing. It barely crosses his mind how this might discredit every word of his testimony. His single consuming thought is breathed in a mournful whisper that leaves his mouth without pause:

_“Rey.”_

His phone buzzes again, and after he opens the message his gaze suddenly snaps upwards. Everything finally slides back into normal momentum. 

“Wait. We’re driving back to my house?”

“Of course, Mr. Solo. Security protocol that you’re not to be on any government property.”

“I need to go to a different residential address. Up in Columbia Heights.”

“Mr. Solo?” His driver adjusts the mirror to get a better look back at him, while the two security guards shift in their seats. 

“There’s a second car following us for back-up,” the guard in the back reminds Ben. “We can’t suddenly detour.”

“Call them and tell them the new address. This is important.”

“Sir,” the guard tries again, a touch of exasperation in his voice. “All our security sweeps have been set up at your residence. That’s where we’re ready to enact protocols. It would take a lot of extra time to sweep a new address.”

“I’m not in a hurry. That was my only appointment of the day, just now.”

The guard stares at Ben, taking in his sudden flux of energy. Ben seemed something near shell-shocked for the first ten minutes of the drive, sitting utterly silent and unmoving. Now, he’s slid forward on his seat, his expression determined and even the whiff of a joke in his words. 

The guard sighs, but unlocks his own phone to contact the car behind them. “Must be important,” he mutters.

On Ben’s own phone screen, the texts are still open. 

Rey: _Come to my place._

Rey: _Fairmont Street, Columbia Heights_

Rey: _Please._

Rey: _I have to see you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HE DID THAT. It remains to be seen how the media and public will react to both Ben's testimony and the attempt to discredit him through Rey, but still - BB BOY DID THAT. Now he and Rey have to deal with the immense fallout. Will it bring them together or will the pressure push them apart?
> 
> I've got some answers to these questions in my head, but I'm sorry to say not on paper yet. ;___; I'm afraid I'm not going to have as much time for writing as I would like in the coming weeks, but I know how terrible it is to be stranded in the home stretch and I'm going to do my best not to leave you all hanging for too long. After returning from vacation my workload has just skyrocketed, and I'm also going to be juggling applying for research grants to meet an upcoming deadline. All in all, there's a lot going on that's stressing me out, and I'm going to take refuge writing these two as much as I can manage. 
> 
> Ben's examination scene was extremely challenging to write, and I sincerely hope it delivered the impact that's been building up. Please please share your thoughts on any aspect of this chapter at all, as it really has been one of the tougher ones!
> 
> Yo here's my [tumblr!](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) Feel free to come poke me if I'm taking too long to update :')


	12. It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, I guess we’re both unemployed now.”
> 
> Rey’s expression melts and brightens at the same time it cracks. Her body simply can’t help leaning towards him, under the surge of feeling he invokes. 
> 
> “Oh, _Ben._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am the Certified Worst for this update delay of approximately 10 years. I offer sincere apologies in the form of an extra long chapter. <3
> 
> [Title credit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc)

Ben: _Are you sure? I have two cars full of security attached to me._

Rey: _I’m sure._

Ben: _On my way._

By the time Ben’s two-car caravan pulls up at Rey’s address, he feels about to overflow. There is relief, of course, that the hearing is behind him. That this ugly burden he’d been carrying is finally released, after weeks of the barbed secret digging into him with more shame each day. But now, the anticipatory tension is flooding into its place. 

Ben had laid his hand on the table, and the President had immediately played his own cards in response. Ben knows full well there’s nothing more he could have done – nothing more he could have said to dodge the attack. The accusation of his shifted loyalty and a twisted motivation had already been waiting in the wings. 

At this point, Ben finds he hardly cares what happens to his public image. The realization is at once sobering and entirely liberating. It wasn’t so long ago that he would have taken the truth of what he knew to the grave, before risking ever besmirching himself in the act of confession.

His only regret is the manner of the counter-attack – the sensationalist, crass characterization that will attach to Rey with the same onus now weighing against each of the words he spoke today. But what happened today is out of Ben’s hands now. He did his part. How the world responds and whether the special investigation confirms and utilizes his intelligence lies beyond his control.

It’s a new, strange feeling – accepting his own ancillary role as much as he accepts his inability to determine the outcome. Even stranger to be comforted by it, and find some small, temporary measure of peace. 

But what he _does_ still control… 

Through the tinted car window, Ben takes in the sight of Rey’s nondescript, multiple-story apartment building for the first time. Dark red brick, outdated architecture, minimal landscaping. He’d told his security detail her apartment number, so half could go inside ahead and secure the entrance. 

_This_ is still up to him, and the importance of it is expanding in his chest, floating higher with each passing moment. 

Ben looks up when the guards emerge from the building entrance and nod to their colleagues to let Ben enter. 

He looks upward, towards where he thinks he might find apartment 501. He opens the car door. 

Maybe he can build something, after all.

* * *

“Let me.” 

Ben shrugs off protocol and speeds his pace to the front of the group escorting him through the hallways. So far only one inquisitive apartment door has opened, but one of the guards had waved the person inside again without any trouble.

When he sees 501 come into sight, Ben doesn’t want some stranger knocking on her door. 

He approaches first, and fights down the sudden onset of nerves that threaten to make him hesitate like a nervous high schooler.

Ben knocks. Three quick raps. 

The door opens within seconds. 

Rey’s dressed in sweatpants and a faded, navy blue Peacecorps t shirt Ben’s seen her sleep in dozens of times. Her hair is down and her eyes look frantic when they immediately fix on him. 

He’s still in the same blue suit he was just wearing on TV. The same tie. The same shadows beneath his eyes. 

But he’s _here_ – solid and real and Rey had started to feel like she couldn’t _breathe_ until she shared the same space as him again and-

Her lips are moving to form his name when she finally takes in the four security guards gathered behind him. 

Ben has only the briefest second to drink in the sight of her before his senior guard clears his throat and steps forward.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. It’s security protocol that we can’t let Ben go in before we do a thorough sweep inside.”

It takes a long moment for Rey to wrest her gaze from Ben’s and find the guard who spoke. 

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

Rey steps aside to let the senior guard and his three subordinates inside. Their weapons still holstered but hands hovering nearby, the four spread out to check every last corner, closet, and window. Rey’s apartment is only a one-bedroom, so it doesn’t take long. 

In the interim, Ben takes just a few steps forward. Only enough to cross the threshold, until he’s almost standing in her living room with her. 

Rey can’t look away from the sight of him here, in her home. The place she never let him into before. He seems even taller than usual, in her tiny living room. And yet it seems that he fits perfectly. 

Ben can’t look anywhere but at her – hardly even taking in the room around him. It’s only been days since they last saw each other, but the ruin left in the last hotel room feels so far away. As if ages have passed. Standing so close to Rey makes the same electricity erupt inside him as always, even while everything else about him feels changed entirely. 

But the sight of her – so beautiful in her bare face and unkempt hair – is the only thing Ben needs to recognize himself. Holding her gaze with his own is all he needs to remember who he really is. What he’s capable of.

A minute or hours later, the guards reconvene. 

“All clear. We’ll be just outside.”

Ben nods acknowledgement – his eyes still not leaving Rey’s. 

The guards file out and the door finally closes behind them. 

Ben and Rey simply stare at each other for another few long seconds. The silence is full, yet gentle. Teeming yet comforting.

There’s so much to say - even while words might be unnecessary when Ben could lose himself in the depth of tenderness in Rey’s eyes. When Rey could spend forever drinking in the peace and resolution radiating from Ben in perfect balance.

Finally, Ben is the one to nudge the moment open. His voice comes with gentleness and relaxed levity. 

“Well, I guess we’re both unemployed now.”

Rey’s expression melts and brightens at the same time it cracks. Her body simply can’t help leaning towards him, under the surge of feeling he invokes. 

“Oh, _Ben_.”

Rey falls towards him, and Ben steps forward instantaneously to catch her against his chest, his arms circling her tight to lace her close against him. Rey presses herself in to him as far as she can, her hands rubbing up his back then across his wide shoulder blades. 

“Ben. The whole time… Through that whole hearing, I just wanted to hold you. When they started yelling, and your hands were shaking… I-I couldn’t even make sense of what I felt.”

“You can say it, if you’re ashamed,” Ben murmurs near her hair, his tone markedly neutral – removed from the self-loathing that so loved to dog his steps. “I would be. I am. I didn’t tell you the full extent of it before…”

“No, _no_ ,” Rey hurries to say immediately. “I suppose I just… hadn’t expected how hard it would be for me to watch you go through that.”

“It’s over now. It’s all out in the open. It’s not my burden to bear anymore or my problem to solve. I did the small bit that I could.”

“It wasn’t small, Ben. It was magnificent.”

Ben blinks at the strange word. But she’s still trying to press herself closer and he does his best to help. He breathes her in, and thinks of that word again. Magnificent. And it defies comprehension that there’s a single person outside this room who would presume to think they could put any words to this at all.

“Rey – what went up on Twitter… I’m so sorry. I never thought that’s what he’d use against me. I couldn’t have even imagined it – imagined you – that way because…” Ben pauses for a shaky breath, eyes swimming in the sight of her so close between his arms and her eyes so bright and gentle for him. “Because you’re the best thing that ever happened to me and I’ll never think differently.”

He pulls back just enough so his hands can slide down her back and then up her arms. So he can see her face – with all the worlds of feeling and sweet weakness and blessed certainty the sight stirs to life in him.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen to me. This will probably mean the end of my career in Washington. And yet, my single regret is that you were pulled into this too – that now you’re associated with all the mistakes I’ve made. It’s not fair and I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me…”

“Ben,” she says, more emphatic this time. “I’m not ashamed.” Her hands twist more tightly against his suit jacket. “I’m not.”

Rey leans in and goes up onto her toes just enough so the words won’t go astray. So nothing can possibly get between them in his head. 

“I’m proud. Not just of what you did today. I’m proud of all of it. Of everything I’ve ever felt or shared with you. Even the fights. Because if not for knowing someone like you - someone who makes me evaluate and assess and really know myself and be sure of the things I’ve always believed in or fought for… I wouldn’t really know the value in it all; The reasons why I am who I am.

“That - and the value in everything you’ve been to me. Even though you disagree with me about so much – someone who _listens_ to me and still cares, regardless. Someone who knows every single bit of me like you do and would keep it all – even though things would be so much easier if sometimes I believed the same things you do. That you care for me even though it’s not easy.”

Ben takes a low, slow breath. Rey’s eyes are bright as spring and loving as lilacs and _just for him_ and half of him feels invincible, while the other half yearns to fall at her feet. His own nerves pale before the force of the opposing compulsions.

He doesn’t know how to react. No, sometimes it hadn’t been easy. Sometimes she made him wish he could remake himself completely. But then, the rest of the time she would make it impossible to see shadow in the world – even within himself.

Somehow, the words he’d always thought impossible (even though he’d long known their truth) suddenly appear on his tongue. On this day of bracing revelations, he supposes his nerves are as hardened as they’ll ever be; though these words, looking right into Rey’s face, do seem somehow more frightening in their own way than anything he’s ever spoken before.

For once in his life, Ben stops the streams of self-doubt and conflicted indecision at their source. 

He reaches up with a sure, still hand to cup Rey’s cheek in his palm. He looks out over the whole world in her eyes.

“I love you, Rey. I always have.”

He watches as her whole face softens; as her eyes fill with some emotion that glimmers like tears. And the words come as naturally as breathing; truth finally finding a home upon his tongue and within his chest.

“Rey. I would spend the rest of my life with you in a heartbeat. The last time we were together…” Ben closes his eyes for a moment, pausing through a flash of anger and shame that seizes his chest. He presses his lips together as he waits for it to pass, along with the specter of trembling that passes through his hands. When he’s able to speak again, he can barely hold her gaze as he forces the words out in a fearful whisper.

“You said… there were moments when you might have fallen in love. Was it true? Or… is it too late?”

He could swim in her eyes, now. Her expression has hardly changed, but her bottom lip has partially tucked itself from sight and there seems to be a slight trembling to her features. 

Ben slowly lets his hand lower from her face. The moment it leaves her skin, she reaches up to clutch his hand between both of her own. Once she has his hand clamped between hers, her words tumble free.

“I know it’s impossible and makes no sense, but… I wanted to be there with you today. I saw you alone at that table - all those cameras in your face and those people shouting. I wanted to just… hold your hand. I wanted to protect you from it all.”

She squeezes his hand hard enough to draw out a wince, but Ben stands immobile. He can look nowhere but her eyes, can think of nothing but her voice, can hear nothing but her gentle words. 

“But this made me realize. I will always want to be by your side. I want to be here with you, no matter what. No matter what minor perspectives we disagree on – _you’re_ more important than all of that. And I want - ”

Rey stumbles for a moment over her own breath. To breathe normally seems so difficult all a sudden – her throat constricting and the backs of her eyes burning before she can help it. Ben’s fingers are gripping her hand just as tightly as hers grip his.

“ – I want to keep you. No matter what we might disagree on in the future, I… I think we’ll always agree that there’s nowhere we’d rather be.”

Ben takes a deep, trembling breath that seems to pass through his whole body. When he speaks, his voice is weak – the softest noise Rey has ever heard.

“I just - I can’t bear losing you anymore. As much as it would hurt to live without you, even sure as I am that no one else will ever be to me what you’ve become – it would hurt even more having to wonder the next time when you might disappear from me. Whether I’ll be able to win you back. As long as we exist in this state where some element of who I am will always drive you away – “

His words cut off when she squeezes his hand so tightly that his fingers are crushed between hers. A flame suddenly alights in her eyes, dancing and certain.

“I don’t care about the politics between us. I don’t care that there are some things we’ll never change each other’s minds about. I don’t care. I love you and I don’t care.”

Ben’s face is wiped completely clear. After a moment of total immobility, his jaw clenches and begins to shake. When Rey sees, she lets go of his hand in favor of crowding close to him, her hands lifting to cup his face between them. 

“I love you, Ben. I do. I think I want to wake up in your arms every morning. I think I want to kiss you every night. I think I want you to stay with me even through the fights. Through whatever difficulties might come.” 

Even as Rey’s thumbs stroke the edges of his face, Ben still appears frozen. His eyes are captured in her gaze completely. When his hands find her waist, they tremble slightly.

His lips part, close, then open again. It takes a long time for him to form words. When he does, they reach Rey as gently as a spring breeze after winter – with the same irrefutable and immutable certainty as the changing of seasons.

“I would be there, with you. Always. You’re right that there’s nowhere I’d rather be. I’ve always felt that way – like I’m only alive when I’m with you. And since falling in love with you, I simply can’t bear to be any version of myself other than this one. The one I am with you. The one you trust. 

“I’ve been… trying to sustain all these lies; telling myself that I had no right to be something other than what I was surrounded by. But - then I met you and more came alive in me. I know that’s who I am, and I’m done fighting with myself.”

“This is who you are,” Rey agrees avidly, pressing herself still closer to him. His arms slide all the way around her waist as her hands still cradle his face. “I saw it in your eyes, Ben. The night after you called me back from Uganda. And every time we made love since then – “

“ _Rey_ ,” he whispers, strangled, pulling her closer until her arms are crushed between them as she refuses to drop her hands from his face. 

“That is what it was – I want you to know,” Rey whispers, soft yet fierce. “When you said you wished you belonged here – with me, _inside me_. You do. Nothing in my whole life has ever made me feel as whole and joyous and _right_ as you do. I know I’ll never feel for anyone else everything that I do right now. I know that’s the truth, and nothing will ever change it.”

Rey is finally forced to let go of him when Ben bends down and falls to her lips. Her hands scrabble to grip his shoulders, then loop all the way around as her body and her mouth fit immediately to the shape of his. His arms entwine around her completely, holding her against him with urgency and resolution and deliverance.

Rey is already pushing his suit jacket from his shoulders as she murmurs against his mouth between fervent kisses: “Nothing will change it, Ben.”

His jacket hits the floor. His hands slide downward, pressing against her hips and then lower as Rey’s fingers quickly work open his tie. 

“No arguments, no fights.”

She hurriedly undoes the buttons of his dress shirt as his hands slide up beneath her Peacecorps shirt, two steps ahead and already unhooking her bra.

“No politics, no media storms.”

Rey separates herself only just enough to pull him towards the doorway beyond which her bedroom lies. 

She looks up into his eyes when she repeats, strained but indomitable, “Nothing will change it.”

Then, everything blurs into pulling hands, stumbling steps, rising breath, and increasingly desperate entreaties. 

It doesn’t matter that Rey’s bed is the smallest they’ve ever shared. They need no more space than for one.

Once they’re both bare, the whole world shrinks down to Ben’s hands smoothing hungrily across her skin and Rey’s mouth claiming his with purpose. This is the world they share - the place where they want for nothing.

When Ben makes strained sounds into her mouth, his hips pressing towards her in need, it is Rey who shifts herself on top before Ben can. It is Rey, who wants him to know exactly how sure she is; how grateful that he is here with her. She stays bent over him at first, soothing his desperate noises with her lips as her legs settle on either side of him. Ben’s mouth follows her, still kissing her hungrily – until Rey shifts herself down his body just enough so the growing slick between her legs finds the shape of him.

A flush explodes through Rey’s body as she pulls away from Ben’s mouth to sit up atop him, her thighs straddling him and her heat only the barest distance from his cock.

Ben makes a pained noise at just the sight of her there on top of him – shoulders back and tits rosy and hands planted against his chest. He is absolutely throbbing, where the head of him presses against her slit, but the angle’s not quite right…

Rey reaches back to adjust. His hands come down to hook behind her knees as she adjusts her hips to align herself. 

“Finally,” Rey breathes, heart already racing when she feels the wide head of him nudging at her entrance in just the right way. She moves both hands to his chest to prop herself in place. She gives the slightest roll of her hips, just to savor the strangled noise from Ben’s throat. She watches the rise and fall of his chest for a moment, feels the press of his fingertips behind her knees, and then she finds his eyes with hers. 

“Where you belong.”

Rey sinks down so Ben slides inside her. He makes a sound like the air is punched from his lungs, his fingers tightening around her legs as she sinks down around him inch by inch. Ben is thick as ever, making Rey’s body stretch all the way open to accommodate him. 

Even though it’s been weeks since the last time, her body knows him so well by now. Her body knows the burning pleasure and incomparable satisfaction he will give her, and her cunt eases open to him in eager anticipation for all of it. 

It only takes her seconds to seat herself on him completely. When she does, she stills for a moment – letting her eyes fall shut and breathing deep as she savors the feeling of holding all of him inside herself. Of feeling him fill places within her no one before him ever reached; places she was never aware of, until the day Ben made love to each and every one of them and they would never be satiated by anyone else ever again. Rey rolls her hips slowly, moaning low as she savors the shape and swell of him within her – how every single thing he touches within her sings in pleasure and adoration and completion. 

“ _Rey_ ,” Ben rasps beneath her, fingers digging into her thighs. She takes mercy on him – would do anything for him – and begins to move.

Rey’s thighs already burn after just a few slides along him. His size makes it a distance to lift and lower herself, but sinking down onto him all the way makes her head spin and her body alight every time, raw and trembling and shocked through with a raw current of hot pleasure that threatens to dismantle her completely.

Beneath her, Ben keeps gasping out her name. His hands slide up and down her thighs, stopping to squeeze occasionally when she locks around him extra tight. 

“Oh _fuck_ ,” he growls when she shifts the angle slightly, sinking down onto him again and just clenching. She bobs up and down his length again, gasping as he penetrates some deeper place that glows like fire licking up her spine. 

Rey’s movements soon become hungry and uncalculated. Ben’s cock crowds out all coherent thought or intent – everything but the consuming need to feel him sliding against her inner walls; to embed him as deep, deep inside of herself as she possibly can and feel him _everywhere._

Her ardor immediately pulling him in to the conflagration, Ben slides his hands up her thighs to grip her hips. 

“Rey. Rey – you feel… fuck, you feel like you were made for me. To take me and fit me… Always did. Like you were meant to be mine.”

His hands tight at her hips, he helps lift and lower her into the upward thrusts he’s in no condition to suppress. 

“ _Ben_ ,” she moans, eyes squeezed shut and body given over to the instinct that’s taken over her to feel _more_ of him, to snap her hips and arch her back and take him again and again as fast as she can. “Yes. _Yes_ ,” she gasps when he adds his strength – his hands pulling her down harder so his upward thrust makes stars bloom in her head and her heart jump.

Everything inside Rey throbs for release. But with the way he keeps filling her – how all that he makes her feel leaves no room for even speech – Rey can’t manage the words. 

She doesn’t need to. Ben knows.

He feels the way those deepest places within her start to quiver and flutter around him. Despite the fact that perhaps she should be loosening up by now, given how big he is and how small she is and how long he’s been fucking up into her, Ben knows she won’t. She never does. As she gets close, she always just gets _tighter_. Ben lost his mind for it – for her – the very first time he was inside her, all the way back in a hotel room in Addis where his entire world imploded.

There’s nothing like it. Nothing like _her_ , and Ben is seized by an irrational need to feel her come just from his fucking, to watch her orgasm take her apart above him as she straddles him with his cock deep inside her, setting all her tension and pleasure loose.

Ben’s hands tighten at her hips. He tilts her back slightly, helping her move at a faster, more desperate pace as she continues riding him. His own hips have lost all control now, shoving up to meet her so wildly that he can see his thrusts in the movements of her tits. She makes a lilting, long noise of need and Ben grits his teeth as he claws back his own release. 

Inside, she’s seizing up around him in a way that nearly sends him mad. But he needs to see her come, needs to feel her be consumed completely in pleasure she took from him.

He tilts her a bit further at the hips, trying to angle his thrusts forward so he can hit the place inside her where…

Rey suddenly cries out, her entire body shuddering as she comes and comes and keeps coming. She stops moving, straddling Ben’s hips with all of him buried inside her and his hands holding her there. She can’t control what rushes from her mouth – curses, endearments, Ben’s name in repetition, and sometimes just long, exalting noises as wave after wave crashes through her. She keeps trembling around him even as her body grips and works him in spasms – drawing out every last bit of sensation. 

Watching her freeze above him, the muscles in her thighs and all inside her locking tight as her head falls back, chest heaving as her orgasm tears through her – Ben breaks apart completely under the weight of her magnificence. He pumps all of his wonder and devotion into her, his brain nearly short-circuiting and his senses going patchy but for the sounds of her whimpering his name.

“I’m so… so full of you. Ben. _Oh_. Nothing feels better than this. Nothing.”

“Rey. You’re so _tight_ , so warm inside. I’ve never felt… Can’t stop…”

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” Her aftershocks squeeze all along the length of him. “Fill me with you.”

Ben groans like it hurts him, and with ungraceful movements pulls Rey down to his chest. Even as he keeps emptying inside her, he wraps her close in shaking arms and breathes incomprehensible noises of fulfillment into her hair. 

“Ben. _Ben_ ,” Rey whispers, nuzzling closer to his warmth as she feels the final surges of his release leaving her hot and drenched inside. Leaving her whole and resolved and rapturous. 

Ben doesn’t slide out – even when their breathing slows and they shift to their sides. Lying so close they can barely make out each other’s faces beyond the individual details, Ben strokes Rey’s hair back from her face piece by piece, tucking strands behind her ear and smoothing the rest to spill over her pillow. 

Rey tips her head forward that final inch so her nose can nudge Ben’s. Her lips brush his so lightly, it’s more an exchange of a single shared breath than a kiss. She keeps her mouth there, feeling the slight caress of Ben’s lips against her own when he murmurs, “You should know. For me – this is for good.”

Rey’s smile comes slowly. It builds from somewhere deep in her soul, taking a while to reach her mouth. When it does, she presses it to Ben’s lips with every bit of tenderness she’s ever known in the world.

Basking in the glimmer in Ben’s eyes, Rey reflects, “Someone like me and someone like you. I guess we made it.”

* * *

Rey’s bathroom is almost too small to fit Ben. Nevertheless, he still manages to kiss her under the shower spray as they soap each other.

Outside the shower, crammed together in the small space, Rey is taking her time toweling all the water from Ben’s torso when he says to her, “I can’t believe I testified only hours ago. It all feels so distant now. I know out there, the fallout is only starting but somehow… I feel so far from it all.”

Rey wraps the towel around his waist and knots the fabric. When she straightens, she’s relieved to find his face still smoothed and relaxed, just as gentle as it has been since he arrived here at her apartment. She lays her arms up over his shoulders. 

“It’s not your responsibility anymore. You’ve done your part.”

One of his hands comes to trace circular patterns along her hip, through the fabric of the towel he wrapped her in only minutes earlier. 

“I know. I can’t believe I’m saying that and meaning it, but… I do. I know.”

Rey steps closer to rest her head against his shoulder. She relaxes into his warmth, leaning in further when his arms slide around her. 

“Watching the broadcast today… I realized I wasn’t fair to you,” Rey thinks aloud. 

There’s nothing at all getting between them anymore – no reason to be anything other than entirely honest.

“I used to try to tell you that you needed to do more. That being part of the Cabinet meant you should have tried to actively influence policy. I know I implied you were complicit, if you did anything less than openly object or rebel.”

“I was complicit,” Ben says immediately, even as his voice remains matter-of-fact. “I knew since the month he came into office that the President had purposefully sabotaged the election; that he only won thanks to illegal foreign interference his own campaign had organized. I knew the whole time. And instead of exposing what I knew, I swallowed it and took a position in an administration I knew to be illegitimate.”

Rey doesn’t pull back to look at him – she stays close to him instead, her head still burrowed against his shoulder.

“What you said today was true, when they asked you why you didn’t come forward before. It wouldn’t have achieved anything. Without the Special Counsel’s investigation about to close; without the mechanisms in place for your testimony to immediately serve a larger purpose, it would have just been deflected. You would have lost your position, and he wouldn’t have faced any consequences. On your own, you couldn’t have done anything.” She squeezes him slightly. “You did the right thing.”

“Only barely in time.”

“It doesn’t matter, Ben. It’s done now.”

Ben rests his cheek against her wet hair, breathing in the coconut scent of her shampoo. It brings a small, nonsensical smile to his face – to think his own hair must smell the same after Rey used her same shampoo on him

He traces his fingertips across her back. He draws slow patterns, grateful for the return of fine motor control when Rey is here beneath his hands again.

“When you watched the broadcast today…” he begins, a soft edge of shame lacing his voice, “Could you see my hands? When they shook… was it obvious?”

This makes Rey’s breath catch, makes her arms tighten around him a bit. 

“Only barely.”

“Rey…”

“Yes, I could see. But only because I knew you were struggling with it. I doubt most people watching would have noticed.”

Ben is silent for a moment, considering which line of thought actually concerns him: That his weakness was broadcasted for the entire country to see plain as day; or that Rey might be thinking that the reason for the weakness still afflicts him.

“It’s all but gone now. The shaking,” Ben murmurs to her. He abandons the patterns he’d been tracing across her back in favor of flattening his hand against her skin, pulling her just a hair closer. “When you left me in that hotel room, exactly as I deserved… that was the moment it all crashed to a stop. As soon as it sunk in that you were gone, I dug out every bit of the shit and put it down the toilet. I haven’t touched any since.”

Rey turns her face towards him, pressing in against his neck. She lays a kiss beneath his jaw. 

“I believe you. It’s over and behind you now.”

“I’m so sorry, Rey. Sorry you had to see me like that. Sorry that I was a coward and it took me so long to wake up.”

“You’ve never been a coward. You faced burdens and held secrets I couldn’t even imagine, much less ever bear on my own the way you did. You just lost your way.”

He clutches her close now, pulling her to him completely.

“Without you, I don’t know if I ever would have found it. I let myself become so isolated without ever realizing it. I lost touch with the things that mattered to me – with the person I really am. I don’t think I would have escaped without you to pull me out. With you, I actually felt like something better than the selfish, deceitful people I was surrounded by. You reminded me that’s not how the world should be.”

“You deserve so much more than that,” Rey murmurs, her hands taking their time as she maps the planes of his back. Her fingers skim his shoulder blades, then slowly down the curve of his spine. 

For every inch of skin she traces, her memory feels its way back across all that she’s learned of him. Each brush of her fingers evokes everything she’s shared with him over the past year, until suddenly it’s all there at once – pressing against her tongue and swelling out and up from her chest. 

Rey pushes back from him only enough so his arms loosen around her, so she can look up into his face.

“You deserve more than lies and deceit. That was how everything operated around you, but I could tell – I could always tell there was more.”

He watches her with tender, rapt focus. He leans towards her, hanging on each of her words. He needs them for every bit that he can’t predict them. He still can barely fathom all that Rey seems to see when she looks at him. Whatever it is that incites the assured affection he long told himself he was either thieving or misconstruing. 

Rey reaches up, and as always, the touch of her fingertips to his face soothes away the cynical voices. 

She looks up, brushing the dark strands of wet hair from his eyes so she can see the deep pools of his eyes clearly. 

“All the way back in China. The embassy where I first met you.”

Ben’s eyes shift a shade lighter as he immediately breathes a laugh.

“You called me irrelevant.”

“…I did?” Rey blinks. 

“Mmhm. I said it was irrelevant if you didn’t want the protections of American citizenship. You countered that _I_ was irrelevant.” Ben shakes his head fondly, his hand rubbing back and forth along her hip. “I was trying to save you from a Chinese prison and you just couldn’t let it be.”

“No. Even then, I couldn’t. Because you know what I remember from that day?” She watches him gaze at her, waiting. Rey tucks some of his longer hair back behind his ear, tracing the shape of it where his ear sticks straight out. “I remember when I asked you how you could do that job. How you could represent our government in a region where its policies are so backwards. Where trade deals and nuclear arms purchases are more important than condemning ethnic persecution and repressive regimes. And you couldn’t answer me. The whole time I’ve known you – you never did.”

Ben opens his mouth, but Rey continues before he can speak, “You had plenty of justifications, sure. The official positions you’d hide behind when we argued. But no, you never answered what I asked you that day. And I knew - I’ve always known - it was because you didn’t have an answer. It was because the part of you who saved that little girl’s life in Sudan, who didn’t leave my side for three whole days after the Uganda bombing, the part of you I’ve come to know so well – it didn’t belong there, in a job like that.”

Ben doesn’t respond right away. He just watches her for a long while, until she finishes tracing her fingertips across his jaw and the shape of his face. Until her hand falls back to his shoulder.

“You saw straight through me. Since the very beginning.” Her waist feels so small and delicate between his hands, and his senses have never resolved their confusion at how petite she is to the touch - while in his mind her presence is all encompassing. In his head, she could overpower him completely. “Even though the rest of me tried to insist it knew better, you were always right. And I needed that desperately – on the days things were most difficult. You were there to help that part of me survive, even when you were the only one who saw it. Even when I couldn’t anymore.”

Rey focuses on the comforting weight of his hands bracketing her waist. From his shoulder, her fingers trace inwards along the gentle slope of his collarbone, then across the hollow of his throat. 

She takes her time, savoring the difference in feeling. Finally – nothing seems purloined or covert. Finally, simply breathing him in and letting his hands rest on her skin for no further purpose isn’t something she has to bargain with herself to justify. It’s no longer the stolen _before_ or the unacknowledged _after._

Ben slides one hand slowly up her back. His head dips down, lips almost brushing her hair. 

“Was it true, what you said earlier? That you’re proud of all we’ve been through? That all of the worry I’ve caused you served some good purpose?”

Rey looks up from where she’d been tracing the patterns of freckles and moles dotted across his chest. When she meets his eyes, she finds them attentive and slightly uneasy.

“Of course it was true. Something so precious can’t come from nothing. I know that.”

Ben doesn’t seem entirely reassured. Rey looks between his eyes again and tries to understand what’s passing behind them. 

His warm hand curls a little closer around her hip. “I don’t want to… hurt you anymore. I hate that I’ve caused you pain in the past. I want to be _good_ for you. I’ve never wanted anything like I want to be with you, but… I know full well that you deserve better…”

She realizes what he’s really asking; what it will take to make him understand. 

It will take things she’s never told anyone. Things she hasn’t spoken about in over a decade. 

It will take the dismantling of walls she built so tall and so long ago, their foundations seemed to have cemented themselves in her soul.

And yet – no one has ever made her feel the way he has. Never before in her life has she felt completely calm, completely safe as she forces herself to carve holes in the walls; as she seeks words for the distant memories hidden behind them.

Standing between Ben’s arms – they might as well have happened to another person, in another world entirely.

She pulls him down a little closer to her, so her forehead nearly rests against his and she doesn’t have to look straight into his eyes. So she doesn’t have to speak above a whisper.

“Ben. What if I told you there’s never been anyone in my life like you?”

Rey’s speech gets tangled in her throat for a moment. Not because the words are difficult or painful – not anymore – but because there is simply so much to try to express to him, and no words that quite mean enough. 

She takes a breath, thinking of all the nights she fell asleep to the thought of him. Thinking of all the times he held her in his arms and made her feel the world was a better place than all the injustice and inequity she lives.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend who lasted longer than six months. But that’s not really… that’s not what I’m talking about.”

She breathes in, closes her eyes, and lets it all out. 

“What I mean is: I was abandoned. I don’t know anything about my parents. I don’t know any relatives. I don’t know why I was put up for adoption, then ended up in foster care. I don’t know why I never got my own family, why no home or parents or siblings ever seemed to fit. I don’t know why I had to change schools and friends so many times. I don’t know why it took me until I won my college scholarship to feel like I might finally have found some small corner of the world to call my own.”

Rey doesn’t open her eyes yet. She can’t. It’s been years since she spoke about these distant shadowy periods of her life, and yet she knows immediately that it feels different. The disparate parts that once seemed so lonesome are now fitting together in her mind like puzzle pieces. She finds she can gaze back almost as easily as opening the first page of a book – knowing a brand new chapter written in a different tone lies just the turn of a page away.

“In college was when I started to claim that corner for myself. When I discovered just what I could do, on my own. I knew I wanted to fight for other people who didn’t know, either – why their lives had been difficult in ways so much worse than mine. I wanted to help them find answers… as cliché as that sounds, when you’re talking about war, poverty, or oppression. But it drove me – made me feel for the first time in my life like I had true purpose. Value.

“But part of me always knew – I wanted to distract myself with other people’s questions because I still didn’t have the answers to my own. To why my whole young life amounted to nothing more than a rotating cast of actors who pretended to care only as long as the show lasted. I’m sure that answer has something to do with the fact that I’ve never really had a long-term relationship. The fact that I’ve never wanted to let someone in close enough to see all these cracks in me. Because if they see that deep, they might see the same things that made so many others leave.”

Rey opens her eyes, gaze somewhere distant over Ben’s shoulder. His face is still so close, but she can’t quite bring herself to look at him yet. Not until she tells him why. 

“So yes, Ben, I meant it. When I said how much it means to me that you still care – even after we’ve fought and hurt each other and you’ve known me at my weakest moments. How much it means to me that I _believe_ that.” 

Rey closes her eyes again, only so she can let her forehead drift those few inches to rest against Ben’s.

“There’s never been anyone in my life like you.”

Words desert Ben. He lets his forehead rest there against Rey’s, and it takes every ounce of his will to keep his breathing calm and controlled. Rey is so close – she is so trusting and relaxed in his arms, her own breath measured and slow as it brushes across his mouth. 

She is calm. In this moment, she is at peace. And Ben knows there isn’t a single thing in the world he wouldn’t do to protect her and her tranquility.

There was a time when he thought that way about status. About his career advancement or the title before his name. 

Now, he thinks it only for her. He knows he will only ever think it for her. And he feels – 

Free. Determined. So powerful that he believes, for the first time, that he might just be good enough for this. He might be enough to tend to her and her happiness. He suddenly knows he has more than enough heart beating in his chest to give her every last bit of it, because he will live so long as she is unburdened and light and can still find the world a place to trust and believe in. 

There is anger, too. It simmers deep down like the churn of volcanic plates. He thinks it might never stop – grinding and sparking together, expelling burning enmity towards every circumstance and shred of apathy that forged her world this way. 

But Ben realizes that within him there is now balance. The anger of different sorts and different sources has always been there. It took on the guise of self-reprobation, until the constant burning away of himself only felt appropriate. Now, he focuses on the small – _so small_ – shape of Rey between his arms, her face warm where it rests against his, and an unprecedented resolution settles over him. It is a resolve that cools and soothes, even while it draws him to heights he could never have conceived. To heights that would be dizzying, if confronted alone.

“Rey,” he breathes. His voice does not tremble. It is sure, and it is soft, and it promises her all things. 

“I would be anything for you. I would take the place of every single _miserable_ person who ever turned their backs on you. Anything you missed. Anything you need. Whatever you want. My life and every single thing in it. Rey – for all that time you felt alone I would make sure there is never a second more.”

Without either of them meaning to – without either having any memory of moving, they are suddenly clutching each other. Rey is swallowed in Ben’s embrace completely, as if slipping into a space where the unanswered losses of the past cease to exist. 

Ben holds all of her to him, and marvels at how easy it suddenly is to devote his entire life to a cause. He understands now, how Rey does it.

Rey’s voice is muffled against Ben’s bare chest. Her hands pull his shoulders down still tighter to her.

“I’ve been afraid to hold on to you. Afraid to believe anything can really be permanent…”

His voice is tangled in her hair; his hands bunching in the fabric of the towel wrapped around her.

“I’m yours, Rey. I’m yours and it’s permanent.”

“Ben – “ Rey’s speech cuts off in her hunger to kiss him – to taste the truth and sincerity of his words against her own lips. 

His mouth is the sweetest it has ever been. His hands against her body are the largest and gentlest she has ever felt.

Rey’s towel dislodges under the grip of Ben’s fingers and falls to the bathroom floor, his following a moment later. Rey kisses him and kisses him, chasing each last syllable and flavor of all he has offered – the safety, trust, and belonging he has always radiated for her, even before it made sense.

He breathes her name into the kiss as he lifts her from the floor, again into the kiss as he carries her through the doorway, into one last kiss as he lays her in her bed and joins her there.

Then it is his hips that kiss her. It is the slow, serene meeting of their bodies that whispers her name, wraps her in an embrace, and stokes her gently full of rapture. 

There is Ben’s whispered voice in her ear, his soft kisses along her throat. 

“You will never be alone. Every day, I’ll make sure. You will only ever be loved.”

Above all, there is the caress of him along and within all she is. His slow, purposeful movements, kissing beneath her ear as he worships at the places within her that remake the fabric of her world. 

Rey pulls him down closer, until her legs are wrapped around him and his entire body enfolds her and she can whisper against his ear, “Ben. _Deeper_.”

He slides a hand down to lift her hips slightly. He plants his knees, finds a new angle, and fills her so completely that Rey swears his essence will live in her forever. He inflames something so deep inside her, Rey forgets her own name until Ben whispers it into her ear. 

“Forever – “ the words escape from Rey’s lips in disjointed gasps as she clutches him still tighter – the broad strength of his shoulders and the peaks of his shoulder blades the grounding she needs as she dissolves from the inside out. “I’ll feel you here forever.”

“Yes, Rey. You will.” Again, he sinks inside where she is open wide to receive him. He shakes above her, breathing stuttering as all he is surges deep to fill all she is. “You will. I promise.”

Rey arms and legs close around him completely as he forges himself a home in her. Her gasps are wet, crumbling against his shoulder as her body rocks as one with his. She is all Ben can perceive – blocking out all else he’s ever known, and defining all he ever will.

When Rey whimpers, the noise brimming with gentle eternity, Ben does not hear it. He _feels_ it flow into him. Beyond the trembling, sublime grasp of her body, he feels himself enveloped in all she desires, knows, and longs for. He hides his face in her hair as he presses deep to the heart of it all. He fathoms all she has ever voiced – and all she will never put words to. All she cannot. Another slow, sacrosanct slide into her, and Ben’s resolve drips like diamonds into her hair. 

Once she starts spasming around him, Ben’s fingers are immediately there to caress her. He knows just what she needs – his first strokes gentle until his thumb presses down in tight circles. 

He maps a messy pattern of kisses at her ear, illuminating it all with, “This is everything to me. Rey - you are.”

Rey’s face is wet when she comes. Her body shakes to her very fingertips, rejoicing as it feels Ben flaring hot right beside her heart, staking a claim that can never be undone.

As the towering wave of their shared climax begins to draw back to sea, Rey focuses on the shape and warmth of him within her, pulsing to match the rhythm of her heartbeat. She knows it is the only raft she will ever need; the only shelter against whatever storms may come. 

The space within her that sings in bliss at his residence there can only be described in one way. It settles through in gentle, rippling aftershocks coursing from her awareness to his: 

Their home.

* * *

Nestling against his chest later, Rey murmurs into his warmth, “You should know – now I won’t give you up for anything.”

His arms seem incapable of ever unlocking. 

“Please don’t, Rey. Not ever.”

* * *

Ben wakes first, in the early hours of the morning. Rey is tucked around him in her narrow bed, the slow breaths of her sleep caressing his neck. Ben focuses on the shape of her bare hip beneath one of his hands – the soft strands of her hair beneath his other. Physically, he has never felt more at peace. 

The unknown pulls at the back of his mind. None of it can quite reach him in the haven of Rey’s bedroom and the haphazard cradle of her arms. In this moment, he hears it all only scratching at the window. In this moment, he is beyond its reach. 

Still, his gaze strays unwittingly to Rey’s phone, where it rests facedown on her nightstand. His own is still buried in the pocket of his suit jacket, strewn somewhere on Rey’s living room floor. He hopes to never touch it again. 

Morbid, inevitable curiosity tugs at him. He imagines he can hear the wind howling, far away outside Rey’s window. 

He’s still staring at her phone when Rey sighs and turns slightly in his arms. He hasn’t moved, but Rey cracks her eyes open and sees where his gaze is fixed. 

Rey lifts a hand and tilts his face down towards her. She presses a sleepy, imprecise kiss next to his mouth. 

“Not yet, Ben. Sleep a bit longer.”

The lingering brush of her lips reels Ben back to her. He cards his fingers through her hair, then lets his lips roam across hers for an aimless, immeasurable time in the merciful morning light. 

He relaxes across her, and slumbers a while longer.

* * *

After they’ve risen from bed hours later; after Rey finds him a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt both massively oversized on her; after she feeds him some toast and fruit and sub-par coffee (“Sorry we can’t all have disgustingly expensive espresso machines in our kitchens,” she huffs with a roll of her eyes. “Bad coffee builds character,” he quips before taking a long gulp), Rey takes his hand in hers on her sofa and turns on the TV. 

They stumble upon Fox News first. 

The headline reads “Solo Testimony Disputed by Perjury Charges”

The news anchor is mid-tirade: “…laughable to treat this as a credible account when the witness is known to have had an intimate relationship with a left-wing radical. One who has frequently and publically used disrespectful, inflammatory language to call for attacks upon our duly elected President and no doubt would have taken any opening to plant seditious influence…”

Rey hurriedly changes the channel. While she thumbs the buttons of the remote, she gives Ben’s hand a reassuring squeeze. When she glances at him and finds him still and pale, she attempts a joke, “Look out for my seditious influence, babe.”

He manages only a quirk of his lips, while his grip on Rey’s hand turns vice-like. 

She finds CNN without even a wince.

This headline reads “Final Collection of Evidence Corroborates Solo Testimony”

Mid-interview, a Justice Department attorney provides updates: “…sought clearance to obtain surveillance tapes from the President’s DC hotel. Thanks to Mr. Solo providing the date, location, and even room number of the meeting with the Russian contact, a warrant for requisitioning footage from security cameras on that date was secured. No security footage is taken within the rooms, of course, but security cameras are posted throughout the hotel hallways. The tapes have been received and although analysis is still underway, we have confirmed both Mr. Solo and the President were present in the hallway outside Room 62 on the date in question. Later the same day, a man appears in the footage who has been matched to Sevastien Skolov’s profile.”

The screen shifts to grainy, slow motion snippets of video footage. An illuminated circle edited into the footage highlights Ben’s face as he passes through the hallway, then the footage jumps ahead to similarly highlight the President’s face in the same hallway. Another jump to a few hours later freezes on a third man’s face. The freeze frame shrinks to half the screen, while a photograph of a man in a suit who must be Skolov appears beside it. The two images match unmistakably. 

“As to the arrangements for monetary compensation totaling some millions of dollars in exchange for hacking activities to sabotage the President’s election rivals, the Special Counsel has engaged analysts to trace international transactions originating from the US in the weeks following the meeting. They’re searching for transactions matching Mr. Solo’s description of Sevastien Skolov’s usual tactics of laundering and re-routing payments through international accounts. Analysts are working around the clock to confirm their findings before the Special Counsel’s report and recommendations are publicized two days from now. But I can say our analysts have already identified several transactions within the identified timeframe including a considerable volume of funds from the President’s publicly traded holdings…”

Rey clicks a few channels until she lands on a rebroadcast of a press conference with the President. 

“…clearly no respect for the discretion demanded of his position, or the meaning of trust. Someone of such disreputable character cannot be taken at their word, and to take his testimony seriously is simply ridiculous.”

“But Mr. President, you never previously expressed any dissatisfaction with Ben Solo’s performance as your advisor or his suitability for the position. Not until he testified against you.”

“I already had my doubts. He consistently opposed policies universally endorsed by the rest of my Cabinet, and now knowing what we do about his questionable ties to liberal agitators, I now see his opposition in a more subversive light. It’s possible he’s been seeking to sabotage my administration since taking the position.”

“Mr. President. If Ben Solo was the only member of your Cabinet with knowledge of your campaign’s ties to foreign agents, it’s possible the public would not all view an attempt to undermine your administration as unpatriotic. Your thoughts?”

“Any attempt to undermine me or undo the 2016 election would be unpatriotic, and to try to say otherwise is ludicrous. Now, if you want to talk about patriotism, then you should be asking me about criminal charges of perjury and slander against a sitting President…”

Rey feels Ben’s hand squeeze more tightly around hers and quickly changes the channel over to MSNBC, landing in the middle of a roundtable discussion. 

“…since first coming into the public eye as Secretary for International Organizations, he has never given reason to doubt his integrity. He attracted some degree of public ire, of course, when he joined the President’s Cabinet and became the spokesperson for some deeply unpopular immigration policies. But within internal Washington circles, Solo has an immaculate reputation. He rose to senior positions within a mere ten years of joining the Foreign Service.”

Rey lets go of his hand in favor of sitting back on the couch and curling into his side. One of Ben’s arms slides around her automatically as she whispers in the lightest tone she can manage, “And you say you’ve never achieved anything, Mr. Immaculate Reputation.” Ben musters only a tight smile, his body still tense and attention glued to the screen with palpable apprehension of each and every word coming from it.

“Being a representative of the President’s foreign policy goals, Mr. Solo has come to be viewed as a conservative figure by most of the public. That perception of course only adds to the irony and unlikelihood of the President’s accusations that Solo has secretly been an agent of advancing some subversive Democrat agenda.”

“Precisely. Though the President claims Mr. Solo has opposed his policy goals in internal discussions, the reality is that Solo has only ever acted with the highest degree of professionalism in fulfilling his role to advocate for the President’s foreign policy goals in the eyes of the public.”

“Even though the President’s accusations might tarnish Mr. Solo’s testimony in the eyes of some, the reality is that the reaction to his testimony should not consider anything further than his professional reputation.”

“Given that his revelations will have such high-stakes consequences, there is understandably an element of hysteria fueling reactions, including both the public’s and that of the President. But regardless, Mr. Solo’s personal relations should play no role in how his testimony is perceived. That is simply inappropriate, and the President’s decision to post photographs in the manner of a tabloid is, frankly, far more shocking than any accusations surrounding Solo.”

“We also have to ask ourselves how and why the President had such photographs in his possession in the first place. Perhaps he anticipated that Solo might come forward with what he knew.”

“Now, as we wait for the Special Counsel’s final report to go public tomorrow, we find attention split between the potential crime of collusion with a foreign government committed by the President’s campaign, and this sensationalized account of a public figure’s personal relationship. One belongs in our headlines and one clearly doesn’t. And if the latter succeeds in deflecting the severity of illegal collusion, that could amount to an unconscionable obstruction of justice.”

Rey finally declares, “Enough” and switches off the TV with a decisive flick of the remote. Ben remains silent beside her, even as his hand rests tight and tense at her shoulder. Rey can practically feel him vibrating as the barrage of all they just heard churns within him. 

Rey _knows_ it isn’t her fault. She knows, rationally, that she has nothing to do with any of this, and any attempt to convince people otherwise is nothing more than an under-handed distraction tactic.

And yet, she can’t help it. She can feel Ben’s torment and frustration as physical pain radiating from him and singeing into her, and she simply can’t help – 

“I’m sorry, Ben. After keeping that secret for so long… after what it did to you, you went in front of all those cameras and you finally told the truth. You should finally be free from it, but... now it’s all complicated because of me.”

Finally, this shakes Ben from his stupor. The shade of guilt in her voice immediately drives every angle of the furor back into perspective. 

This is what those who are seeking to cheat justice would want – Ben and Rey on the defensive; twisted up to feel they have something to apologize for or a single thing to regret. 

The anger coursing through Ben is once again clear-purposed and centered. It is matched only by resolute certainty - the most blessed thing he has known in years.

“Rey. Please don’t say anything like that ever again.”

Rey blinks, caught off guard by the sudden hardness of his voice. He shifts on the couch to face her, his expression equally firm.

“The last thing I want to hear is that you regret anything that’s passed between us. Because I don’t – not a fucking thing. I wouldn’t do a single thing differently, if it meant I end up anywhere other than sitting here with you right now.”

Rey’s lips drift apart in amazement, then slowly close again as she meets his gaze. 

The look she finds there is new in its lucidity, and yet so starkly familiar that it banishes all else in its wake. One look into his eyes in all their intensity, and she is all places at once. 

She is in a hotel room in Addis Ababa, glowering under the sparks in his eyes and spitting curses at him a moment before they collide. 

She is in a hotel bar, watching his eyes come alive as he lifts his head to greet her.

She is in the backseat of a car, wondering why he’s looking at her like the most miraculous thing he’s ever seen. 

She is standing on his doorstep alone, trying to process the sight of him soot-streaked and wide-eyed to find her there. 

She is warily watching his advance from a hotel bathroom, his eyes full of terror. 

And then she is here, once again losing herself in the planets spinning in his eyes – a reflection of the magnitude he perceives when he takes her in.

By some counts, they have lost everything. Their jobs, their anonymity, their control over their public images. 

Yet by other counts, they have gained everything. Self-determination, their freedom from circumstances that pitted them as adversaries, and finally their unqualified union. 

Ben’s eyes make it clear. He wouldn’t trade each hard-earned victory for anything in the world.

“Okay,” Rey murmurs, nodding into the dark intensity of his gaze. She reaches up to stroke his hair back from his forehead. “Never again.”

Aching for his smile again, Rey nudges him with her shoulder. “You know, finally getting what I thought I wanted this whole time isn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped.”

Ben gives her a guarded look, apprehension flashing behind his eyes as he tries to follow her words. 

Rey flashes a grin to lead him out of the woods. 

“Destroying your career, I mean.”

Ben breathes out in a loud rush. “Right.” 

His hand slides up and down her back as he gazes past her at no particular point, his mind still working to catch up to the range of reactions the news just doused over him. 

“Guess we’re equal now,” Ben muses, somewhat absently. “I can’t deny I played a role in your sector funding cuts.”

Rey curls her legs up and leans in to Ben’s chest, small enough that he can easily wrap her up completely. 

“Why does being terrible for each other feel so right?”

Ben breathes what might be a chuckle, but it’s lost in Rey’s hair. His lips always seem to gravitate there. The fit always feels so seamless.

“I’ve been asking myself that since the day I met you.”

Rey nestles her head in beneath his chin. She focuses on the soft brush of his kisses along the top of her head, and soaks in these stolen moments of serenity, before the storm inevitably touches ground. 

Rey curls one hand around Ben’s bicep. She swallows, and reaches for what she knows will pull them through – what she knows with certainty in the midst of whatever chaos may come. Even new and incipient as it is, still feeling like something with wings that’s ever flying through the room before eventually settling to roost - it is anything but fragile.

“I love you, Ben.”

Ben breathes out slow and deep across her hair. The words glide through even his darkest fears; even the heaviest of the anxieties trying to take hold of him. 

They remind him: He is more than just their prey. He has mastered them all once, and he will do so again.

“Darling. Me too.”

Ben presses his face to her hair. He holds her silently for a long time – centering himself. Remembering what’s important, and reclaiming the control that still seems unfamiliar. Each breath of Rey’s scent, each moment of her warmth makes it all the clearer.

Finally, Ben sits up, calm but purposed. 

“Rey, I’m going to need you to do me a favor.”

Rey sits back so she can see his face – the smooth certainty there. 

“Of course.”

Ben nods towards where his suit jacket hangs over the back of a chair, folded from the day before. 

“I need to make a call, but I don’t want to see everything waiting on my phone.”

Rey nods, sliding a hand over his shoulder as she unfolds herself and stands up. Still in pajama bottoms and her PeaceCorps t-shirt, she goes to retrieve Ben’s phone and turns to angle the screen away from his field of vision. 

A touch of the screen bursts open with hundreds of message and missed call notifications. Ben winces slightly on the couch as he watches the sweeping motions of her thumb. 

“What’s your code?”

He tells her, but just before she unlocks the phone, Rey sees a burst of notifications that make her chest constrict. 

She chews her bottom lip as she debates for a moment. Then, she says gently, “Ben. There are about a dozen calls from your mother.” 

Ben fidgets on the couch, hands rushing to busy themselves picking at the fabric. 

“I’m not ready for that right now.”

“Okay. I’m sorry for mentioning it.”

Finally, Rey unlocks the phone and clears all 471 notifications. 

“Who am I calling for you?”

“The Justice Department attorney I first spoke to about testifying. I need to see if I’m actually open to criminal liability.”

Rey’s face blanches a bit, but she opens his contacts without a word. Ben dictates his name. Rey finds it, initiates the call, then comes to pass the phone to Ben. He squeezes her hand in thanks as he takes it. 

“Hello, Mr. Thomson. This is Ben Solo.” 

Ben rises from the couch and drifts towards the bedroom, expression somber as the conversation begins. Rey peels off into the kitchen, cleaning their dishes and coffee mugs from breakfast just for something to do with her hands. 

Ben reappears in the kitchen doorway some ten minutes later, phone gone.

“He said it’s all but impossible for me to be charged with anything. The Special Counsel’s inquiry granted me immunity for testifying, so the Justice Department won’t file anything against me no matter how much the White House needles them. The only possibility is if the President has either White House counsel or his personal lawyer bring charges, but in that case the Justice Department would appoint someone to represent me. He said it’s doubtful any formal charges would ever materialize since it’s only his word calling me a liar without any shred of proof.”

“We saw the Special Counsel got the security footage from the hotel proving the meeting took place. Analysts are tracking the laundered payments. The evidence only proves you told the truth. He’s only attacking you because he knows it.”

Ben crosses his arms in the kitchen doorway, his expression still grim. 

Rey still can hardly believe he’s here – filling her tiny kitchen with his unequivocal presence. 

“I just hope enough of the public sees it that way. We both know the fanatical segments of the President’s base will believe I made it all up.”

“And nothing will change their minds. You can’t let that weigh on you.”

“I know.”

“Besides, this isn’t a matter of public passions, nor should it be. It’s only the Special Prosecutor you needed to share the facts with, and that’s what you did. Releasing the photo of us… all it did was stir up unrelated controversy.”

Rey drops the dish towel she’d been twisting between her hands on the counter. She pushes her hair back from her face as she comes to stand near him, her expression firm and eyes protective. 

“Your testimony is already in evidence, and the Special Counsel’s final report and recommendations are going to be informed by your facts. Whatever public scandal may be happening is irrelevant.”

Leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, Ben still frowns and his eyes remain downcast. His mouth shifts back and forth, a nervous tick as he processes one potential appalling scenario after another.

Rey reaches for one of his hands, pulling his arms apart and tugging him back to the here and now. 

“Hey. Since when is sleeping with a rabble-rousing liberal a crime, anyway?”

Ben’s eyes slowly meander up to Rey’s face. He smiles slowly, still slightly distant behind the internal noise of his nerves. He spends a long minute just gazing at her, one of his thumbs tracing along the lines of her palm.

“You always feel like a crime.”

“Don’t worry. For once in my life, I promise I won’t whistle blow.”

He smiles with half his mouth, though his eyes have softened and mostly refocused on the warmth and safety of the present moment.

Eventually, he sighs and seems to shrink back into himself slightly. 

“I should go home. I can’t keep on bothering you forever. You probably have things to do and I don’t…”

“I know exactly what you should do,” Rey soundly cuts him off, voice incontestable. “You should stay, and I should order Indian.”

Without waiting for the slow, tentative expression that rises to his surface, Rey tips up on her toes to press a kiss beside his mouth before she spins off to dig out the menu from her favorite Indian delivery place. 

Rey darts into the bedroom to retrieve her phone, then back into the kitchen, where Ben still hasn’t moved. Rey’s already on the phone. 

“Lamb biryani as usual?” Rey whispers to him between menu item orders.

Busy just taking her in – incredulity and amusement and tenderness all tangled across his features – Ben simply nods. 

Rey flips through the menu again and lists off a few additional items. Then she pauses and looks over to Ben again.

“Do you want to split some garlic naan?”

Ben makes himself stand still. Forces himself not to go to her and crowd her back against her own fridge – not when she’s on the phone with her own small-scale but vastly important mission burning in her eyes. 

Not when she is all the gravity that matters in the world. 

Finally, Ben swallows and replies softly, “Yes, Rey. I would.”

* * *

They’re on the couch watching cartoons when the din of commotion rumbles from the hallway. Rey sits up from where she’d been laying mostly on top of Ben. 

The noise from the hallway seems a bit louder than that of a deliveryman’s arrival.

As Rey approaches the door, she finally hears a familiar voice in the din outside that makes her gasp and rush to fling the door open.

“What are you gonna do? Frisk me?” Rose is in the middle of demanding, glaring up at one of the tall security guards when Rey appears in the doorway. 

Rose whirls. She gasps, mouth falling open for a moment as all trace of hostility drops from her face in an instant. Her expression fills up with protective anxiety, mouth trembling for just a moment before she leaps to embrace Rey. 

“You weren’t answering texts or calls! I told you to check Twitter and then you just fell of the grid for a whole day and I’ve been going crazy, imagining you here alone dealing with all this and…”

Rey closes her eyes as she dips her head down towards Rose’s shoulder, giving the smaller woman a thankful squeeze.

“I’m so sorry, Rose. It’s been too hard to check the news a lot and I just ignored my phone…”

Mid-motion of drawing back to look up at Rey, Rose catches a glimpse into the apartment and freezes, eyes going very wide. 

Her eyes dart between the couch and Rey’s face several times in rapid succession. Then, Rose leans up close again and whispers almost theatrically, “He’s actually here?”

Rey laughs easily, earning a strange look from Rose at her ease.

“Yes. So don’t worry – I haven’t been alone.”

Rey is too pleasantly surprised by her friend’s sudden appearance to be troubled by the faint look of distrust Rose seems to point towards the direction of the couch. Behind her, Rey hears the rustling sound of Ben getting up.

“This – well, isn’t exactly how I imagined this would happen someday but… Ben, this is one of my best friends, Rose. Rose – this is…”

Speech freezes in Rey’s throat for a moment as she turns toward Ben. He has floated up to her side, and Rey is struck completely anew at the sight of him – this first time Rose has ever laid eyes on him. She suddenly takes in the details that had passed her by, buried beneath all the towering anxiety and revelatory promises which filled the hours since he arrived. 

Rey sees now how even her biggest, oldest t shirt stretches tight across Ben’s chest and seems to pinch a little beneath his arms. The sweatpants she found for him are definitely a pair Rose has seen Rey wear herself. He lifts a hand to push fingers through his somewhat unruly hair – a tell of nerves. 

It seems impossible that they’ve never stood together for an introduction like this before. Nearly as impossible as it is to find a word that’s right to describe him.

Rey’s smile comes automatically, as her hand gravitates to brush his arm. 

“I guess he’s my boyfriend.”

The words break a small, surprised laugh from Ben’s throat. His eyes meet Rey’s only briefly, but the moment of communion is enough to know he’ll be revisiting that word when they’re alone. 

“Rose. Nice to meet you.” Ben extends a hand, and Rey notices his shoulders dip a little, bridging at least a tiny bit of the considerable height difference between them. 

“Um.” Though Rose’s speech needs a moment to catch up, she shakes Ben’s proffered hand without delay. Then, she gives herself a small shake and stumbles out, “Honestly, this is kind of surreal and I definitely didn’t expect it but – nice to meet you too.” 

Rose shoots a quick glance to Rey, back to Ben, then goes ahead and blurts, “I didn’t use to like you very much whenever I saw you on TV, but it was really impressive – your testimony yesterday. It could change everything.”

Ben’s expression goes blank for a moment, surprised and a little guarded. Until Rey’s fingers brush his arm again. 

Ben’s eyes focus on Rose again and he musters a slight smile. “I’m still processing myself. I can barely remember everything I said yesterday.”

“Well, everyone else in the country will certainly remember.”

Into the slightly awkward silence that follows, Rey inserts, “I used to not like him very much either.”

Chuckles and hesitant smiles echo between the three of them. It’s strange, for Rey to see these two people so close to different areas in her life thrown together, without even the background of an ‘Oh, I’ve heard so much about you.’ She’s never mentioned either to the other; simply the idea of this meeting seemed a complete impossibility.

Until now. And suddenly – it’s not even remotely strange.

A knock sounds at the door, with the voice of one of Ben’s guards: “Food delivery?”

Rey goes to answer the door, while Ben musters a tentative smile towards Rose. “We ordered extra garlic naan and lamb biryani, if you want dinner.”

“Oh, I don’t-…”

“More than enough!” Rey pipes as she carries the bags towards the kitchen, talking back to Rose over her shoulder. “Ben never finishes his so you’ll be helping out, really.”

“It’s true,” he affirms with a nod.

Rose scrunches her mouth to the side, looking between Rey bustling in the kitchen and Ben hovering in the living room – who really doesn’t look nearly as soulless as Rose always thought he seemed. Especially not when he’s wearing what’s definitely one of Rey’s oldest sleepshirts. 

“Okay, fine. Sounds good.”

* * *

“So. ‘Boyfriend’?”

Ben’s voice seems to curl around the word, warm and fond. The sound of it wraps around Rey completely. Ben’s arms do the same a moment later as he slips into Rey’s narrow bed beside her for the second night in a row. 

Rey’s lips curl upwards, even as Ben nestles in behind her where he can’t see.

“It sounded… weird, didn’t it?” she asks. “After everything.”

Ben’s parted lips brush her skin, tracing down along the shape of her neck.

“I think it sounded perfect.”

Breathed directly into her skin, Rey feels what he doesn’t voice. His lips find the slope of her collarbone and skim slow kisses along it. His mouth lingers long, extra moments – perhaps a lingering kiss for each day, week, month when the word hadn’t been spoken. 

Finally, Rey turns in his arms just enough to see his face. 

“Can I ask you something random and… kind of stupid?”

Ben’s expression grows slightly wary, but he nods all the same. 

“Ages ago, when you stopped seeing me for a while because you had a girlfriend… Who was she?”

Ben blinks, taken aback. “You’ve thought about this?”

Rey huffs a little, looking away. “Only a little.”

Ben breathes a laugh along her skin. “More than I have.”

Rey’s gaze remains beyond him, her attention still with her question, so he sits up only enough to muster a bit of seriousness.

“She was a colleague at State. We were posted together in China. Looking back now, I suppose maybe she was always interested, but it wasn’t until we both landed back in DC that I thought to try things out.”

It had been at least two months, when she hadn’t heard from him. Had that been enough time?

“And…?” Rey prompts, voice purposefully neutral. “How did it go?”

Ben doesn’t respond at first. He just focuses his gaze entirely on Rey, taking in the sight no matter how much it blots out nearly everything else – including his memory. 

But one thing he does remember crystal clear.

Looking into the eyes of his single experiment and trying to remind himself it was no fault of hers that she wasn’t Rey. 

For that, the fault had been entirely his own.

Finally, Ben bends close along the shape of Rey, his arms tightening around her slightly. He dips his head until his lips find hers in a slow, chaste kiss that soaks in the taste of her.

After he pulls back long moments later, he finally murmurs the simple answer.

“Abysmally.”

* * *

Rey wakes in the middle of the night. The heavy, comforting weight of Ben’s arm is missing from her waist, and when she shifts back she fails to find the solid press of his body. When she turns in the empty bed, she sees a sliver of light leaking from beneath the closed bathroom door. 

After minutes pass without his return, Rey begins growing irritated by how cold the bed suddenly seems without him. She clambers to her feet and shuffles over to the bathroom door.

She knocks once. 

“Ben? You okay?”

He doesn’t immediately answer, so Rey pushes open the door. For a fleeting moment, she’s reminded of a bathroom door in a hotel closed against her. The thought makes her pulse stutter.

But when Rey opens the door, she finds Ben seated on the closed toilet, his legs apart and head down between his knees. From head to toe, his limbs shake in jarring, uncontrolled spasms.

“Ben,” Rey breathes, hurrying over to kneel beside him and rub her hands across his back. 

“S-sorry. I’m sorry, Rey. The withdrawal only rarely hits me anymore. I swear…”

“Shh,” Rey soothes, leaning close to bring her lips to his hair. Her hands clasp his head and shoulders against herself to ground him still. 

His body still seized by waves of tremors, he makes a feeble effort to pull away. Rey only gathers him closer, absorbing the fits and bursts of his withdrawal into the stillness and solidity of her own body. 

She squeezes her eyes shut as the image rises of him suffering worse, alone in his own bathroom. She feels sick herself knowing that must have been the worst of it – the days before he testified. When Rey was the furthest apart from him she’d ever been.

Ben’s voice stutters for a moment before he can force through the palpitations. “You shouldn’t be bothered with this. I-it’s not your problem. I wish you’d go back to bed and leave me…”

“No,” she cuts in immediately, voice firm but tone gentle. “I’m only bothered if you try shutting me out, especially during this.”

“But I don’t want you to see…” Ben’s voice shuts down for a moment as a spasm briefly wracks his body. He squeezes his eyes shut as if trying to fight it off. He attempts to pull away from her again in a rough but weak jerk of his shoulders. “I’m ashamed enough as it is, please….”

Rey shakes her head, a frown hardening her mouth but her eyes sparking with determination.

“I don’t care how you feel about it – I’m here for good. I’m here even when you’re not sure you want me to be.” She strokes her fingers through his hair once, squeezing his shoulders slightly when she feels how he shudders. Her voice softens, “I think that’s when you need me most.”

“Rey,” he whispers, voice pleading and aggrieved, grateful and penitent all in one helpless avalanche. 

“Come on. Come back to bed. I won’t let you be alone anymore.”

Rey hooks her arms around his chest and helps him to his feet, planting her own feet to support his weight when she feels how unsteady he is. 

Ben stops trying to pull away, even as he continues mustering noises of protest. Rey firmly quiets each of them as she maneuvers him to the bedroom.

Across her tiny bed, Rey settles Ben down with his head pillowed in her lap. When she feels the clammy sweat at his brow, she spreads blankets over as much of him as she can reach. There, he finally falls silent – his protests ceasing and eyes slipping shut as Rey strokes her fingers through his hair. Gradually, the convulsions grow farther and farther apart. 

Ten minutes later, once the shaking recedes to occasional full-body tremors, Ben begins mumbling against her knee, voice cracked and supplicating, “You should leave me… You deserve more and I-I just keep falling apart… Of course you’d leave a fucking useless addict…”

Rey adjusts the blanket to cover his shoulders, then resumes stroking his hair. She stays silent at first, letting all of Ben’s self-destruction chip its way free. She shifts to rub his shoulder when she feels the next wave shake its way through him. She runs her hand up and down his arm, his body trembling through each moment of regret, shame, and delusion he’s ever lived made corporeal. Rey returns her hand to his hair, brushing it back from his face as his war of attrition shakes closer to its end. His breathing turns damp and tremulous, voice soft and choked around the refrain of

* * *

“leave me” as he quakes in Rey’s hands. 

Only when that final wave subsides, when Ben sinks into quiet and stillness again in her lap – only then does Rey finally speak. 

“I lied to you earlier, Ben.” 

He doesn’t seem to hear her at first, distant in the haze of his retreating withdrawal. Yet he seems to go more still at the sound of her voice, his muscles relaxing just a bit. Rey continues drawing her fingers through his hair, waiting until he turns his head towards her voice just slightly.

“After we watched the news, and you told me never to regret a thing we’ve been through. I said how good it feels, being terrible for each other.”

Ben breathes a coarse laugh against her knee, approaching lucidity again. “Doesn’t feel so good now, hm?”

“No, it doesn’t.” Rey sucks her bottom lip between her teeth as she strokes his hair back again, watching his expression remain listless. 

She thinks of his voice, irreproachable and inexorable as falling: _I’m yours, Rey. I’m yours, and it’s permanent._ She lets his hair slip through her fingers, and remembers his arms around her after she confessed things she’s never told anyone. She remembers the debilitating moment she gave the memories shape in words that might have swallowed her entirely; then the shape of him there, constant and simple and unfailing as the laws of nature.

“Because that’s not what we are.”

Rey’s fingertips ghost across Ben’s brow, then move to smooth a few strands of sweaty hair behind his ear. She watches his attention slowly tighten, feels his head shift in her lap as her words bring him back to himself. 

“Even all the times I disagreed with you. Even the moments when I thought we could never work. I was never anything less than sure that under all the distractions and complications – you _are_ good for me. Good not in spite of the people we are, but because of it.”

Ben moves slowly, shifting to his back so he can see her face clearly from where his head still rests in her lap. He lays spread and relaxed, his fit finally subsided. His eyes, tired but clear, search her face for a long moment.

“I’m selfish, Rey. I always have been, and for you I always will be.”

Rey’s fingers still to rest in his hair. One of his hands lifts to find her knee and curl around it.

“I hated myself a little – a lot – at the beginning. When our lives would never fit together outside hotel rooms and I knew you were hurt by some of my decisions. I hated myself for not letting you go. A better man would have wanted you to find someone who might actually deserve you.”

Rey smiles slowly, and this time the smile wobbles slightly as she resumes stroking his hair. 

“I don’t want a better man, Ben. He sounds boring.”

There’s plenty more Rey could say – the words already streaming up behind her lips.

_Deep down, I always wanted someone to be selfish for me._

_I want to believe that every day you hate yourself a little less._

_Somehow, I’ve only come to love you more for each of your mistakes._

She settles with simply, “It’s my turn to be selfish, now.”

She settles a hand over his chest, the other still in his hair. Her hand rests right over his heart, steady and sure and insistent. It holds the weight of something enduring.

* * *

Hours later, Rey lies awake to the sound of Ben’s blessedly peaceful breathing. His head pillowed against her chest, he slumbers through the pre-dawn glow beginning to creep beneath Rey’s curtains. Occasionally, he makes a bleary noise in his sleep and Rey smooths his hair until he quiets. 

Her phone is still on the bedside table, where she’d left it over a day ago and hasn’t touched it since. Now, with each passing minute, she finds it more difficult to endure. 

Finally, her heart rate beginning to quicken but the growing uncertainty somehow worse – she reaches over to seize her phone.

She barely blinks at the countless notifications on her home screen, swiping them aside impatiently to pull up Twitter instead. Two images dominate the trending tags. Side by side – a still of Ben during his testimony, expression grim and focused, and the shadowy photo of them from the back room of the Hamilton, his hand hovering near her arm with familiarity and their bodies close.

Rey swallows, nearly chewing a hole through her bottom lip as she follows one of the links racking up attention by the second. It looks to be some gossip site – the top of the article page plastered with photos of herself and Ben. Her at the ICE rally; her younger face screaming at Chinese police forces during the Tibet protests. Ben during a television interview. Ben standing in the White House rose garden. Of course, the photo from the Hamilton – grainy and huge.

Bile already lining her throat, Rey’s eyes dart down the page in defiance of all good sense.

“Ben Solo and Rey Johnson: Two seemingly polar opposites, whose rival political presences would make them the least likely pair ever to be caught dead together. Well, it seems they are just that – a couple who wouldn’t be caught dead together in public. It’s nothing short of stunning that even with thousands of people now obsessed with finding more evidence of the rumored relationship, nothing more has surfaced than additional versions of the same photo dropped by the President after Solo’s damning testimony against him. But it’s clear the country is nothing less than obsessed – as speculation over the would-be couple rivals even coverage of the impact of Solo’s testimony on the Special Counsel’s Investigation into election interference.

“The entire country seems to be asking themselves how this improbable union might have come to pass – and whether there’s any chance of it being a happy one. Perhaps we’re all so possessed with the hopeful ideal of romance spanning across the aisle; pulling together two disparate people whose ideologies couldn’t be more opposed. Or – perhaps it’s the masochistic inability to look away from an impending tragedy; as such a volatile combination must sooner or later be set for disaster.

“As it turns out, exclusive intel provided to us by an insider close to one side of the couple makes the latter seem the more likely. This exclusive source revealed the couple had a cataclysmic falling out several days before Solo’s televised testimony. The two had met at a hotel, but Johnson was seen storming out not even an hour after she arrived. Could it be possible that Solo’s decision to testify and the content of his testimony itself was influenced by a desire to win back his lover? At heart, will the two always remain at such odds?”

Rey’s breathing comes loud and shakily as a trembling finger navigates back to Twitter. Only a short scroll reveals the spread of the article’s insinuation: That Ben’s testimony was fabricated for personal, inappropriate reasons involving her. Topping the feed are new tweets by the President, repeating his defamation of Ben’s motivations.

Rey’s head spins. She never told a soul about Ben – much less details about where they met or their separation after she discovered he was using. She knows Ben hardly sees his friends anymore, or anyone outside of the Cabinet, for that matter. And even if he did, Rey knows there isn’t a single soul with whom he’d want to discuss their falling out and its reasons.

Unease roils hot in Rey’s stomach. Who could have possibly been watching them?

She quickly navigates away from social media and to reputable news sites. Blessedly, their headlines focus only on Ben’s testimony. Rey clicks into an article showing yet more images of Skolov, as well as additional footage of Skolov, Ben, and the President from inside the hotel on the day of the purported meeting. 

“With the Special Counsel’s final conclusions and recommendations expected sometime today, more and more evidence appears to prove the veracity of Ben Solo’s testimony. As investigations conclude, Solo could have single-handedly provided just the smoking gun the Special Counsel needs to legitimize and bolster his conclusions, while filling in the blanks of the President’s direct involvement…”

With a deep, calming breath, Rey switches off the screen and sets her phone aside. She rolls over, curling in close against Ben. He’d started quietly snoring as Rey read.

“The smoking gun,” Rey murmurs to herself and him in his sleeping proximity. It wasn’t so long ago that Ben had been scoffing at the investigation, telling Rey with irritating confidence that the Special Counsel would never find such end-all evidence. 

Then, it had been unthinkable that the one man with the ammunition in his own memory would ever load the cartridge. 

Now, here she lies with him. In a very different bed, in very different circumstances. But now he sleeps soundly beside her and Rey closes her own eyes, entirely resolved and fulfilled in this one small sanctuary with him – in the midst of the storm. 

It used to be the opposite – Ben the raging wind and gale force that drew all else into havoc. Now the world is turned upside down, and he is all she trusts to keep her grounded. All she knows will keep her safe, keep her warm no matter how much the storm dislodges.

* * *

When the sun nears mid-day, Rey and Ben are awoken by banging on Rey’s apartment door. 

Ben jerks alert, sitting up quickly. He only relaxes slightly when he hears the voices of his guards from outside, calling him. 

“I’ll take care of it,” he tells Rey as he clambers from bed and pulls on the same t-shirt he’s been borrowing from her for two days now. He’s still in her sweatpants to match. 

“I’m coming too,” Rey says, voice muffled under a sweatshirt as she pulls it down over her pajamas. 

Rey has just stumbled into the living room when Ben opens the door. 

Three of his guards immediately crowd into the room, scanning the room anew and hands hovering over their holstered firearms. 

“Sir, we’re putting you on lockdown,” one of the guards says in a gruff voice brooking no argument. The senior guard isn’t among them, but they seem to wield plenty of authority nonetheless.

And yet. “What do you mean?” Rey demands. “What’s happened?”

The three guards – two men, one very tall woman – look between each other, then between Ben and Rey. Their incredulous expressions slowly wane to something near sympathy. 

“Yes, we just woke up,” Rey affirms, crossing her arms. “ _You_ guys woke us.”

It’s the woman guard who relaxes her demeanor just enough to manage something akin to a gentle tone. 

“Turn on the TV.”

Rey stands still for a moment. Her eyes dart to meet Ben’s across the room. His expression is bleak, but for her his eyes remain gentle. 

The impending moment of reckoning passes between them in the blink of an eye; as does the combined strength to face it.

Ben approaches her side as Rey takes the remote from the coffee table and turns on the TV. She switches a few channels from the cartoons they’d been watching the day before.

Then it’s there. Everywhere. On every channel.

Smoke billowing out from the wide front windows of a secluded, white-walled house. The red sirens of screaming fire trucks. Approximately five different versions of the headline: “Bombing at Solo Residence”

From head to toe, Rey goes numb. She stands stiff, each muscle frozen and her brain lagging behind the words being spoken by a news anchor.

“…approximately 10:45 this morning. Emergency response teams determined the explosive seems to have been thrown into a front window of the house. The device was small and apparently homemade. Fortunately, no one was at home in the residence and no casualties have been reported. Emergency responders were called by a neighbor who caught sight of the smoke after the bomb’s detonation. No clues have yet to be collected regarding the identity of the bomber, but it’s likely an extremist acting in retaliation to Mr. Solo’s key role in providing evidence for the Special Counsel’s report publicized earlier this morning…”

“ _God…_ ” Rey breathes, her face pale and hands trembling as she turns to press herself blindly into Ben’s side. Ben simply stares at the TV, face impassive as if not quite comprehending the images. He automatically presses a hand to Rey’s back, curling an arm around her as she breathes shakily against his chest, hiding her face there.

“You were here. _You were here_ ,” Rey whispers, her voice trembling and barely-there beneath the weight of shock and relief that would nearly crush her where she stands, if not for the centering weight of Ben’s hand between her shoulder blades, rubbing in small, unconscious circles that slowly make the ground solid beneath her feet again.

“I tried to go home last night,” Ben states – voice empty and unwavering like a straight, merciless black line; a statement as simple as pulling the pin from an explosive. 

“But I kept you here. You’re _here_.”

Rey’s voice is faint, disbelieving and still recovering, but her fingers grip Ben’s shirt so tightly they might impose permanent residency. 

Her small body radiates words she doesn’t speak, but Ben feels them passing into himself so clearly.

_Here. Safe. Mine._

Ben is the first of the two of them to catch up with the rest of the anchor’s commentary.

“The Special Counsel’s conclusions...”

Rey unlatches from him just enough so Ben can take the remote and flick through channels until he finds a rebroadcast.

Despite their positioning on opposite sides of the room, the three security guards seem to shift on their feet in coordinated agitation.

The same Special Counsel who led Ben’s televised examination stands between several Justice Department attorneys. The podium he speaks from is surrounded by a veritable ocean of journalists – cameras clicking and flashing incessantly.

“…alerted the Treasury to trace and reverse the transactions which moved through several laundered accounts. These large sums all left the US within the month following Sevastien Skolov’s visit to the President’s DC hotel. The funds were drawn largely from the President’s private holdings and assets, but also included private sector stock yields and government-backed bonds. The misappropriation of government funds is a Constitutionally established felony, and the Justice Department will file criminal charges befitting the infraction. 

“All together, these findings have corroborated the picture painted by Ben Solo’s testimony of financial kick-backs to Moscow after a successful campaign of Russian-sponsored hacking to enable the President’s electoral success. 

“This investigation has revealed several actions which, upon a formal inquiry and vote by Congress, could amount to impeachable offenses or high crimes. Firstly: The collusion of a Presidential campaign with a foreign power. The President’s campaign engaged a foreign government to interfere in a US election. This interference could be found to invalidate the results of the 2016 election, once the activities of foreign hackers and the reach of their influence have been more thoroughly revealed.

“Secondly: The abuse of Presidential powers for personal gain. It was only through his newly elected office that the President was able to deliver his part of a quid pro quo. After benefitting from foreign election interference which secured his victory in the 2016 election, the President abused the newly-received powers of his office to channel government assets and taxpayer dollars into illegal accounts, as compensation to the same foreign power which has been proven in separate inquiries to have spread voter misinformation and hacked voting machines. 

“Thirdly: Willful sabotage of a US general election. With the details provided by Ben Solo as to the nature of the agreement made between the President and Russia before his election, questioning was undertaken of staff who worked on the President’s campaign. Several senior campaign staff were found to possess ties to the Kremlin, and at least four separate phone calls have been traced which were made from the campaign’s headquarter office to Moscow. 

“The specific acts of sabotage detailed by Mr. Solo: Hacking the Democratic National Convention, and leaking classified emails of the President’s election rival both took place following these phone calls. The misinformation campaigns prior to election day and manipulation of votes all benefitted the President exclusively. Departing from the characteristics of a cyber attack intended only to undermine public faith in an election, the effect of this interference was to guarantee a certain single outcome to what should be a fair and open process. 

“Finally, an analysis of hacking activities on Election Day showed that the highest concentrations of activity focused on the same key swing states which had been identified by the President’s campaign as their key battleground electorates. 

“The full results of this special investigation, including all evidence collected and sworn affidavits of all witnesses interviewed, will be delivered to the House Judiciary Committee by the end of this week. Along with the full report, there will be delivered a formal recommendation that the House begin an Impeachment inquiry and prepare full Articles of Impeachment addressing all three instances of high crimes…”

The Special Counsel’s voice becomes drowned out in a chaotic furor of shouting as the press section rise to their feet. Ben hurriedly mutes the volume before the clamoring can rise further. 

He stands frozen for one, three, five, then ten seconds. His eyes remain trained on the muted TV, his expression subdued and mouth a perfectly straight, unreadable line. Whatever giant mass may be churning within him, it’s trapped inside a thick, stubborn outer shell that remains raised in enduring, self-protective instinct. 

Beside him, it’s all Rey can do to keep everything inside. She knows this fight is far from over; knows this is only the first step in what will be a long, torturous struggle over the most fundamental meaning of truth in a democracy. She knows each of Ben’s words will continue being contested, while the American people collectively question just who can be trusted. Which spokesperson for which side; which institutions really represent the desire for remedy and improvement; and which have come to represent only their own might. 

Rey flashes back to the moment of helplessness and total injustice, when she held the funding cut letter in her hand. When the aid sector was gutted and countless civil society groups and human rights defenders around the world suddenly found themselves exposed, destitute, and friendless. It could have been her foreign colleagues’ livelihoods that were funneled off for money laundering. It could be her own vision of a society with justice and integrity worth fighting for that’s on the line. 

And it could be Ben – the very person in who she saw the struggle for that same society waging every day; who from day to day scoffed at its existence and embodied its values in ways both sweeping and intimate – who initiated this final endeavor for the conscience of American democracy.

“They listened,” Rey whispers, stepping close enough to Ben to speak the words just for him. Close enough to raise a hand to rub his still-stiff, frozen arm. “You gave all that was necessary. All that and more. You’ve atoned.”

Rey doesn’t move away until Ben’s head turns – until his eyes find hers. She holds his gaze until she’s sure he understands. 

She doesn’t mean that he needs to atone for _her_. Only for the self-censure and bitter dissonance he woke up and waged war with every single day. For the divide between the person he sees in the mirror and the one she fell in love with. 

Ben presses his lips together. He swallows slowly. His expression remains fixed, but his eyes momentarily swim. 

“Is it enough?” he asks, his whisper hoarse. 

If they were alone, Rey would cradle his uneasy face between her hands. She might stroke her thumb along his jaw before kissing gentle reassurance to each corner of his lips. 

But they aren’t, so instead she whispers: “That’s for you to know.”

Ben’s shoulders begin to ease. Just as the tension behind his mouth begins to subside and he looks, just for a moment, as if he’s seeing the world clearly for the first time… one of his guards clears his throat. 

“Sir. Now that your testimony had such an impact, you’re going to attract more threats than ever.”

Ben’s expression solidifies again, his eyes sharp and shoulders lifting. Even in Rey’s too-small shirt and his hair rumpled around his face, he still manages to look dignified.

“Was anyone at my house this morning when…?”

“No. We’ve all been rotating shifts here. But we’re following lock-down procedures for at least the next three days.”

Ben’s jaw goes rigid suddenly, his eyes flitting to each corner of Rey’s living room. His eyes skim over Rey before darting away so quickly, the act alone might have been dangerous.

His voice is more tightly-wound now, “Is here… secure? I’m sure you’re making efforts to maintain a low profile?”

“Of course. We’re only wearing civilian clothes and we’re never seen in groups. So far, your presence here should still be secret. Lockdown should keep it that way.”

“What are lockdown procedures?” Rey asks, a slight edge in her voice at being unable to understand what so gravely concerns Ben.

Ben’s jaw remains tense as he explains, “It means two guards in the room with me at all times. And I’m not allowed outside. I have to stay in places deemed secure. Right now, this looks like the only one.”

Something strange and uneasy flips in Rey’s stomach. For her apartment to remain secure, no one can know he’s here. If this is the last safe place for him, Rey has to make sure that whatever source spilled word of their hotel fight to a tabloid site can never again…

Rey casts an apprehensive look around the room before reaching for Ben’s arm.

“Ben, I don’t…”

Everyone in the room starts when the apartment door abruptly bangs open. 

The senior guard stands in the doorway - the same who took command of Ben’s security detail following the car bombing. In comparison to when Ben arrived and the senior guard had politely but curtly told Rey her apartment had to be searched, he now seems strangely… out of sorts. For a long moment, his gaze simply darts back and forth in a mad dash between each of the people he’s just found in the room.

He straightens, rolling his shoulders as he finally steps into the room and nudges the door shut behind him. 

“You two implemented lock-down, then?”

The three guards already in the room shoot each other a quick but unmistakable look.

“Yes, sir. You were off shift this morning when we heard news of the bombing at Mr. Solo’s house and you couldn’t be reached by phone so…”

“Good. That was the right thing to do. We’ll need to keep him on lockdown here for at least a few days, if not longer…”

The older man finally looks from his subordinates to Ben. His gaze seems to stick there, heavy with something that sends a strange chill down Rey’s back. Beside her, she feels Ben bristle. 

The senior guard musters an uneven half smile as he finally eases his attention towards his subordinates. 

“You three take a break. It’s been a trying morning. I’ll take the next watch.”

Another furtive trio of glances are exchanged between the three guards standing arrayed around Ben and Rey. 

Hesitantly, one speaks up, “But sir – lockdown protocol means at least two of us need to be with Mr. Solo at all times.”

“I know. So you should both go home and clean up one last time before we start the protocol in earnest.”

One standing on the other side of the room speaks now, “I’m sorry, sir, but this is highly irregular. I don’t think any of us would feel comfortable leaving our posts at a time like this.”

The senior guard looks slowly between the three of them, his body rigid and fists clenched at his sides. Thick silence unfolds in the room, until the man finally sighs, closing his eyes and lifting a hand to rub the bridge of his nose as if it aches him. 

“You know,” he says on an exhale, his tone heavy and put-upon, “There comes a point where a man can’t be expected to do his job blind.”

He doesn’t elaborate at first – just stands there with a hand covering his face. 

“Blind, sir?” one of the three guards in the living room ventures, clearly equally as lost as both Ben and Rey. 

The older man’s hand lowers. When his gaze lifts up to the room again, his eyes are shadowed. 

“Blind to his own faith and principles.”

Rey’s gaze moves to the guard standing closest to her. The woman shifts on her feet. Rey’s not sure if she imagines the twitch of the woman’s hand towards the holster her firearm. 

“That’s our job, sir. We leave all that at the door.”

The senior guard’s eyes shift slowly, inching towards Ben until they become fixed there. 

“That’s certainly not his philosophy. And I’m not sure he deserves the protection of people who do.”

Rey watches as the woman’s hand covers the handle of her firearm with a slow, near indecipherable movement. 

In her chest, Rey’s heart is beating a frantic rhythm of danger and panic, even while the room and people around her remain locked in a frozen state of suspension, dangling just at the edge of a livewire. 

A sharp intake of breath sounds from the other side of the room. 

“Someone talked to the press. More than that – someone betrayed our charge’s safety and privacy. It could have been the same person who leaked the address of his residence to a terrorist, waiting for the day something happens to make them angry enough to use it.”

The young man’s face looks pale and shaken by his own words – yet when he speaks the next sentence, his presence becomes firm and accusatory. 

“It could have been you.”

Ben goes rigid as stone. Beside him, Rey pushes his arm away with an annoyed shove when he tries to slide her behind him.

In the doorway, the senior guard wears a smirk that nears boredom.

“Sure, I talked to the press. To a lot more important people, too. You all may have recused yourselves when the FBI came sniffing around, but I did what was right.”

The younger guard bursts out in repulsed outrage, “The President should never have had you or any of us questioned. You should never have talked. It’s the gravest of ethics breaches on both sides.”

“He’s below ethics. People like him are the reason our political system’s in shambles. He betrayed his country to make himself look the hero.”

“The car bomb. No leads from the investigation afterwards were ever shared with us. We were never told where the leak might have been. Unless…”

“If I’d already been posted on him then, I wouldn’t have gotten the wrong car.”

In a single snap of motion borne of years of training and instinct, every firearm in the room is drawn. 

The instantaneous instinct that jolts Ben’s body to shield Rey in the mere span of a heartbeat - it’s matched by the reflexes of only one guard in the room.

The younger guard filled with indignant outrage at the truth of his own revelation betrays no reluctance. Rey shouts at the sound of the gunshot, and before the sound dies away the senior guard is already on the floor, a clean shot through the forearm. 

The woman guard lunges forward and kicks her fallen boss’ handgun out of reach. Ignoring his stifled sounds of pain, she swiftly presses his head down to the floor and keeps him there prostrate with a heavy foot against his lower back. 

Across the room, the one who’d dealt the blow nods to his second colleague. 

“Go get cuffs from the car while she holds him. He’s on his way to expulsion from the Service and criminal charges.”

The third guard does as bade, holstering his weapon as he darts from the room. The man who seems to have assumed command moves towards the woman to ensure their ex-boss is kept secure. 

“Ben-…” Rey gasps in a faint punch of breath.

For a paralyzing moment, Ben can’t look away from the man bleeding on Rey’s floor. One of the few men he’d never thought to question. Even after everything, he is stunned by his own naivety. 

In morbid compulsion, the sight of the mole nearly consumes Ben. The man who supported two different attempts on his life. Who almost separated him forever from…

Rey makes a noise behind Ben like her lungs are constricting. Finally, Ben sees light again. He whirls from the scene of ruin, taking Rey in with his eyes, arms, and entire focus. 

“Are you okay?” he murmurs, his body still and solid for her even as his voice wavers. 

“Fine. Fine.” Rey musters, eyes wide and slightly crazed as they struggle to fully take in the scene.

“They…. They shot someone in my living room.”

Rey’s fingers barely touch Ben’s chest – her muscles frozen and confused in the automatic act of reaching for him. Her eyes are glued over his shoulder, her face waxen. 

For a moment, a knot of panic appears in Ben’s chest; life-threatening in other ways. 

This is perhaps too much to ever ask of her. 

Ben slides his fingertips up Rey’s arms, the gentle motion matching the “shh” from his lips. Rather than a sudden, full-body motion that would sweep her up, he rests his hands at her hips – contained and measured, but fingers spread to offer anchor. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m sorry I brought this to you.” 

Rey doesn’t look up at him. Her gaze remains fixed over his shoulder. Her eyes suddenly narrow. Ben’s chest flashes cold when Rey pushes him aside, attention fixed. 

“How do we know these two are trustworthy?” she asks, voice stony. She crosses her arms tightly over her chest as the two younger guards still in the room with them turn to face her. 

“Ma’am?” the de-facto leader asks. 

“We thought we could trust him,” Rey says, nodding her chin at the older guard pressed to the floor. “We were wrong.”

“Ma-am…” Rey’s gaze cuts to the woman, making her give pause. After a moment of silence, the tall woman clears her throat and restarts, her tone less clinical. “Rey. My two colleagues and I have been devoted to Ben’s safety every hour of the day for a year now. He…” her foot digs into the older man’s back for emphasis, “… was only assigned when the President had an agenda against Ben. This one’s been compromised the whole time. We have no agenda but our jobs. The FBI approached the three of us for the President’s smear campaign, and I promise you they got nothing from any of us. The only pride and integrity we know is that of our oaths of service. And I swear to you any of the three of us would lay down our lives before we fail.”

Rey studies the woman for a long moment. She’s a good almost two feet taller than Rey – likely even taller than Ben, hard as that is to believe. With her foot still digging into the informer’s back, her expression firm and body language immovable, Rey’s suspicion slowly dissipate. 

“What are your names?” she finally asks, tone more curious now than challenging. 

The woman looks to her male counterpart, ever adapting to hierarchy. 

The young leader turns to Rey, expression placating without condescension. 

“I’m Pedro, but go by Poe. She’s Gwen, but goes by Phas. And our third…”

Right on cue, the third guard reenters the room with handcuffs dangling from his fingers. 

“He’s Mitaka, goes by Mika.”

Mika gives Rey a small smile as he enters. She recognizes him as the first of them she ever interacted with – the one who made the “on again, off again” joke when she went to meet Ben in one of their many hotel rooms. Rey can’t help her automatic smile in return, reassurance clarifying. 

Behind Rey, Ben stands stiff with his hands spread at his sides. He stares at Phas for a long time, taking in the first time she or any of his security detail have ever called him Ben. It had always been “sir” or “Mr. Solo.”

But now, after the three turned on their superior officer to protect him – not anymore.

“We’re meant to do our jobs independent of anything happening outside,” Poe states as Phas wrenches their disgraced commander to his feet. Mika cuffs his hands behind his back and drops a hood over his head to finally stop his glaring at Ben. “Service assignments aren’t contingent on any politics. Our assignments are life terms. That means no one but Ben can call off his security detail. For however many years until he decides it’s not needed, we cover him and those closest to him.”

Rey was already convinced of their commitment. But suddenly the true extent of it – that she’s now in the middle of all this – hits her with the force of an entirely new trial to confront. For the briefest moment, it’s difficult to breathe. A man was just shot in her living room, and she is irrevocable entangled in the passions and dissension which led to a permanent red stain on her carpet.

Then, Rey turns. She looks at Ben. His eyes meet hers hesitantly, as if unsure what he’ll find there.

Rey breathes. She breathes again. Suddenly, it’s the easiest thing in the world. 

All of it is. 

Ben looks moored in place. His expression remains guarded, on edge and defensive after all that just happened, and yet Rey doesn’t miss the way his stance leans towards her ever so slightly. She knows he won’t be first to speak. Deep behind his eyes, Rey can see his glimmer of fear.

Without breaking eye contact, Rey asks, “So what do we do?”

The words are aimed back over her shoulder for the guards. But the resolution in her eyes, the warmth in her attention – it’s all for Ben. Ben hears only “we”, and takes it deep into his heart. 

“We can’t stay here in my apartment forever,” Rey continues, “and Ben’s place doesn’t seem habitable right now. Where do we go to protect ourselves?”

“The safest option is probably to temporarily leave the country,” Poe says. Rey and Ben turn to him in tandem. “The entire public knows Ben’s face, and everyone has an opinion on him right now. Some people have demonstrated their willingness to act violently on their opinions. We should remove you while the public is so volatile. Here, you could be the target of not only premeditated attacks, but random public acts of passion. The best move for the time being is to take you off the field.”

“Could the three of you accompany us overseas?”

“We will be wherever you are, in any country.”

Rey nods in satisfaction, but Ben suddenly wavers under the weight of apprehension. The word “we” that so fulfilled him only a moment ago abruptly turns threatening, chilling him all the way through. 

“I’m a target no matter where I go,” Ben echoes, voice veering towards the acrid tone he reserves for only himself. It makes Rey’s head swivel towards him immediately. “I’d be putting you in danger, if you’re seen leaving the country with me. That… it’s too much, Rey.”

“Ben,” Rey bites in a voice almost chiding. She quickly closes the distance between them, taking one of his hands between her own and lowering her voice. 

“You said this was for good. Well, that starts now.”

Ben shakes his head, even as his hand instinctively squeezes hers. “This is different. You know I belong to you, but right now it’s not safe for you and I couldn’t live with myself if…”

Rey drops his hand with a roll of her eyes and a soft sound of exasperation. 

A few feet away, Mitaka clears his throat. 

“Actually, sir, with you is probably the safest place for her right now. She’s in headlines almost as much as you are. With you she’d have the same security oversight. But if you separate, she can’t be protected as well.”

Rey nods as if the matter is closed. She crosses her arms and gives Ben a decidedly unimpressed expression. 

“I’m coming with you. And I don’t need your permission.”

Ben looks into her eyes. Far from the first time, he marvels at her uncomplicated conviction. 

He will never comprehend how her conviction found him. 

In her eyes are all the words that passed between them in these last two days. 

_For me, this is for good._

_Now I won’t give you up for anything._

_I’m yours, and it’s permanent._

Ben reaches up to tuck stray strands of hair behind her ear. Now, in the liminal space after, he asks simply, “You’re really sure you want to let me ruin your life?”

Slowly, Rey looks down and watches the movement as her fingers link with his again. 

“It’s been ruined since the day you walked into it.” 

Her fingertips squeeze against his knuckles. She looks up at him again, and her smile, well… 

Simply ruinous. 

“Irrevocably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was certainly a Trip chipping away at this while the impeachment hearings were happening. Most days it was cathartic to work through all my frustration in a creative outlet; I hope the indulgence into the political repercussions of Ben's testimony did something of the same for those reading.
> 
> It was also a relief to finally have these idiots admitting everything to each other! :') Hope it felt just as gratifying to all of you! There's still a bit more of their story to tell after this, but do please let me know your thoughts on all they went through together just during these 2 days in Rey's apartment. What a two days they were, huh?
> 
> I'm currently in London for the TROS premiere and red carpet!!!!!!! EXCITED AND ANXIOUS AS HELL - READY AND NOT READY AT THE SAME TIME. BUT LET'S GO ALL THE SAME! Wishing you all the best, happiest, and (hopefully) most fulfilling TROS viewing experience ever!
> 
> [My Tumblr!](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/)


	13. June 2020: An (Unofficial) Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic was an outlet for a lot of my political frustrations throughout the last year. Frustration is far too weak of a work to describe my current feelings. I left DC back in March when the quarantine started, but I've been in constant talks this past week with my work colleagues to make sure the global rule of law-focused nonprofit where we work takes up its share of accountability. I've been frustrated that I can't join my friends who've been protesting in DC, but providing all the remote support I can. 
> 
> I started imagining how different this crisis might have shaken out, with different leadership. That brought my thinking back to this fic. I suppose this is a spoiler for how I planned to end the fic, but I needed to write something like this just to imagine a better world, and these characters were perfect.

Rey emerges from the black vehicle first. Ben steps out a few paces behind her, as she’d asked. 

When they saw the rows of boisterous reporters lining their path up to the White House, Ben had shifted close in anticipation of getting out alongside her and putting himself between Rey and all their noise. But even knowing it might be called mere pride, Rey finds she doesn’t much like the image of the first woman President being shielded by her husband.

The journalists are especially loud today. Rey isn’t surprised. She’d briefed herself thoroughly on the flight back from the China summit. 

“Madame President!”  
“What action will you be taking concerning the murder of yet another African American at the hands of police?!” “  
“Do you have a plan for greater accountability?!”

Rey grits her teeth. She forces herself to remember her coaching – don’t engage with journalists off the cuff. Her zeal will obscure her reason, and none of her points will be made. 

The noise finally drops out as the Secret Servicemen shut the door behind them. 

Rey stands still for a long moment, staring fiercely at the carpeted floor. When she looks up at Ben, she finds his expression focused into a silent message she recognizes well. 

_Don’t drown in this._

She ignores him. She turns to the nearest aide and instructs, “Convene everyone in the Situation Room in ten minutes. And I mean _everyone_.”

“You know, you don’t have to come.”

Ben already has a mask in his hand - a moment away from strapping it on as Marine One lands on the south lawn. 

“Like hell I don’t. If you’re going, I go too. Doesn’t matter what my opinion is.”

Rey busies herself with affixing her own mask, filling a few moments to cover her reaction. It’s hard – having to seem indifferent to Ben when they’re perpetually surrounded by staffers, security, or press. But almost eight months into her term, the constant support of his presence has already pulled her through too many tough days. 

The myriad things she feels she should say flash through her mind. 

_It’s not safe. There’s a pandemic AND social unrest. I feel I need to take this risk, but you don’t._

She voices none of them. She knows what Ben’s response would be. He’s coming on this trip to Minneapolis no matter what. 

First, Rey meets with the Minneapolis Police Chief. She puts him under pressure initially, asking why there had been such a delay in bringing charges; why the police had initially released false information as to the cause of death. 

Even with half of her face obscured behind a mask, she is fearsome. 

Then she changes tactics. She asks for the Chief’s insight on why racial tensions in the city had become so fraught. She asks what sort of resources or training they could have used, to ensure every officer was made well aware of the boundaries of force, and what would happen should those boundaries be crossed. She asks how many protesters are currently in custody, then pardons them all. 

Second, she meets with the Mayor. She asks what citywide restrictions and curfews are now in effect. She asks how many police are out on the streets and what degree of force they’ve been authorized to use. She asks what measures are being taken to preserve the safety of protestors. She asks the estimated value of damages, and pledges federal aid in restoring the city. She does not promise military presence, quickly sidestepping when the topic is broached. 

Finally, she meets with the family of the deceased. The meeting is discrete – just Rey and two Servicemen who come to the house. Rey insists on no photos, not wanting the visit cheapened by a photo op. 

When she returns to the car, she looks shaken. Ben places his hand on her knee. 

“What happened?”

Rey pulls her mask down, looks out the tinted window as she rubs once at her red-rimmed eyes. 

“I promised I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure another death like this never happens again.” She looks at Ben now, resolute. “And I meant it.”

The President’s visit defuses some of the outrage which otherwise might have incited further days of chaos. 

Back in DC, Rey immediately begins scheduling visits to every major city across the country. In a press conference, she explains her intention to meet with Police Chiefs as well as representatives of neighborhood and protest organizations in each city. She describes her goal of establishing mandated federal training and oversight standards for police and security forces across the country. Her visits will inform the most appropriate shape of such federal standards – to ensure accountability without impeding the role of police departments in maintaining rule of law. 

Still, fonts of deep-seated trauma and rage spill over. Riots are averted, but large-scale demonstrations arise in countless cities across the country. It doesn’t take long for Lafayette Square to fill with protestors. 

Rey does not give the order to clear the Square after night falls. She lays awake in bed beside Ben all night, listening to the ongoing chants. 

“I remember when that was me,” she whispers to him near 2 AM. 

Ben remains awake with her, though drifting. He reaches to stroke his fingers through her hair in the way he knows soothes her. She breathes out long and slow, nestling closer against him. 

“They’re not shouting at you,” Ben murmurs. “You are not to blame for decades of discrimination and centuries of violence.”

“But Ben, have I changed?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean… my response so far. Am I not doing the equivalent of what I’ve always done? Am I fighting with any less urgency?”

“You know full well it’s different now. Your job isn’t to fight for what _you_ believe anymore. It’s to fight for what they believe. And you are putting up that fight with every bit of urgency you possess.”

Rey falls quiet again. Ben presses a few soft kisses along her face, then spoons her close. She finds his fingers and holds them tight. 

The protestors remain the next day. Rey struggles valiantly during several morning meetings, but she simply cannot keep her focus. Finally, she marches through the hallways until she reaches the wide windows overlooking the Square. 

Ben waves off the aides who followed and comes to stand beside her at the window. 

“You know what I’m thinking,” she states. 

Ben frowns, even as he nods. But when Rey begins to step away, he can’t stop himself reaching to grip her hand. He can’t help the way his voice spikes, soft but desperate.

“Please don’t. I can’t – we can’t keep you safe.”

Rey doesn’t shake his hand off. She looks up into his eyes and smiles gently, long enough until it seems to relax him. 

“That’s not an option people of color in this country have ever had. To be truly safe. That’s not right, and _I_ am going to fight it. I will take nothing for granted.”

She leans up to brush a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. She doesn’t need to say that this time, he remains behind. 

She straps on a mask before she steps outside, allowing two Servicemen to flank her.

When the protestors at the front of the crowd recognize who is crossing the lawn towards them, a hush falls over the Square. Signs are halfway lowered in uncertainty, as uneasy murmuring begins to spread. 

Rey stops only feet from the fence; when she can make out the individual faces. 

She feels guilt threatening to swallow her. She feels responsibility and purpose - heavy upon her shoulders.

Nevertheless, she lifts her head high as she asks, “May I join you all?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Don't worry - my headcanon is the protests stay peaceful and Rey safely returns for many more happy/sexy times with the First Gentleman :))
> 
> Stay safe and sane, everyone. <3


End file.
